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LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND 



BOOKS BY EZRA POUND 

PROVENCA, being poems selected 
from Personae, Exultations, and 
Canzoniere 

THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE: 

An attempt to define someiifhat 
the charm of the pre-renaissance 
literature of Latin-Europe 

THE SONNETS AND BALLATE 
OF GUI DO CAVALCANTl 

RIPOSTES 

DES IMAGISTES: an anthology 
of the Imagists, Ezra Pound, 
Aldington, Amy Loivell, Ford 
Maddox Hueffer, and others 

GAUDIER-BRZESKA : A memoir 

NOH: A Study of the Classical 
Stage of Japan {ivith Ernest 
Fenollosa. Alfred A. Knopf, 
New York) 

LUSTRA zvith Earlier Poems. {Al- 
fred A. Knopf, New York) 

PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS. 
{Prose. In preparation: Alfred 
A. Knopf, New York) 



L U S T R A 

o/Ezra Pound 

with Earlier Poems ^ 



New York . Alfred A. Knopf . Mcmxvii 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 
EZRA POUND / 

Pukliihea Ocubtr, 1911 






PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AUESICA 



NOV 24 1517 ' 



»Gi,A479208 ^ f-^ 



Vail de Lencour 
Cui dono lepidum novum libellum. 



CONTENTS 



Ten zone 13 

The Condolence 14 

The Garret 15 

The Garden 16 

Ortus 16 

Salutation 17 

Salutation the Second 18 

The Spring 20 

Albatre 20 

Causa 21 

Commission 21 

A Pact 23 

Surgit Fama 24 

Preference 25 

Dance Figure 25 

April 27 

Gentildonna 27 

The Rest 28 

Les Milwin 29 

Further Instructions 30 

A Song of the Degrees 31 

Ite 32 

Dum Capitolium Scandet 32 

To KaX^j/ 33 

The Study in Aesthetics 33 

The Bellaires 34 

The New Cake of Soap 36 

Salvationists 37 

Epitaph 38 

Arides 38 

The Bath Tub 38 

Amities 39 

Meditatio 40 

To Dives 41 

Ladies 41 



Phyllidula 42 

The Patterns 43 

Coda 43 

The Seeing Eye 43 

Ancora 44 

" Dompna pois de me no'us 

cal" 45 
The Coming of War: Actaeon 

48 
After Ch'u Yuan 49 
Liu Ch'e 49 
Fan-piece, for her Imperial 

Lord 50 
Ts'ai Chi'h 50 

In a Station of the Metro 50 
Alba 51 
Heather 51 
The Faun 51 
Coitus 52 

The Encounter 52 
Tempora 53 

Black Slippers: Bellotti 53 
Society 54 

Image from D'Orleans 54 
Papyrus 55 
" lone, Dead the Long Year " 

55 
Shop Girl 56 
To Formianus' Young Lady 

Friend 56 
Tame Cat 57 
L'Art, 1910 57 
Simulacra 58 

Women Before a Shop 58 
Epilogue 58 



The Social Order 59 
The Tea Shop 60 
Ancient Music 61 
The Lake Isle 61 
Epitaphs 62 
Our Contemporaries 63 



Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cos- 
mic 63 
The Three Poets 64 
The Gipsy 64 
The Game of Chess 65 
Provincia Deserta 66 



CATHAY 



Song of the Bowmen of Shu 73 

The Beautiful Toilet 74 

The River Song 75 

The River-Merchant's Wife: A 
Letter 77 

The Jewel Stairs' Grievance 79 

Poem by the Bridge at Ten- 
Shin 80 

Lament of the Frontier Guard 
81 

Exile's Letter 83 

Four Poems of Departure 

Separation on the River Ki- 

ang 87 
Taking Leave of a Friend 88 
Leave-taking near Shoku 88 
The City of Choan 89 

South-Folk in Cold Country 89 

Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku 90 



A Ballad of the Mulberry Road 

91 
Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu 

92 
To-Em-Mei's " The Unmoving 

Cloud " 94 
Near Perigord 96 
Villanelle: The Psychological 

Hour 105 
Dans un Omnibus de Londres 

107 
Pagani's, November 8 109 
To a Friend Writing on Cab- 
aret Dancers 109 
Homage to Quintus Septimius 

Florentis Christianus 114 
Fish and the Shadow ii6 
Impressions of Frangois-Marie 

Arouet (De Voltaire) 117 



POEMS PUBLISHED BEFORE 1911 



In Durance 123 

Piere Vidol Old 125 

Prayer for His Lady's Life 129 

"Blandula, TenuUa, Vagula " 

130 
Erat Hora 130 
The Sea of Glass 131 
Rome 131 
Her Monument, The Image Cut 

Thereon 132 
Housman's Message to Mankind 

135 



Translations from Heine 135 

Extra poem from Heine 42 

Und Drang 141 

Ripostes 152 

In Exitum Cuiusdam 153 

Apparuit 154 

The Tomb at Akr Caar 155 

Portrait d'une Femme 157 

New York 158 

A Girl 159 

"Phasellus Hie" 159 

An Object 160 



Quies i6i 

The Seafarer i6i 

The Cloak 165 

An Immorality 166 

Dieu! Qu'il la fait 167 

Salve Pontifex 167 

Awpia 172 

The Needle 172 



Sub Mare 173 

Plunge 174 

A Virginal 175 

Pan Is Dead 175 

The Picture 176 

Of Jacopo del Sellaio 177 

The Return 177 



THREE CANTOS 
Three Cantos of a Poem of Some Length 180 



LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND 



TENZONE 

Will people accept them? 

(i.e. these songs). 
As a timorous wench from a centaur 

(or a centurion), 
Already they flee, howling in terror. 



Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes? 

Their virgin stupidity is untemptable. 
I beg you, my friendly critics. 
Do not set about to procure me an audience. 



I mate with my free kind upon the crags; 

the hidden recesses 
Have heard the echo of my heels, 

In the cool light, 

in the darkness. 



13 



THE CONDOLENCE 

A mis soledades voy, 
De mis soledades vengo, 
Porque por andar conmigo 
Mi bastan mis pensamientos. 
Lope de Vega. 

O my fellow sufferers, songs of my youth, 
A lot of asses praise you because you are " virile," 
We, you, I ! We are " Red Bloods " 1 
Imagine it, my fellow sufferers — 
Our maleness lifts us out of the ruck, 
Who'd have foreseen it? 



O my fellow sufferers, we went out under the trees, 
We were in especial bored with male stupidity. 
We went forth gathering delicate thoughts. 
Our " fantastikon " delighted to serve us. 
We were not exasperated with women, 
for the female is ductile. 



And now you hear what is said to us : 
We are compared to that sort of person 
Who wanders about announcing his sex 



14 



As if he had just discovered it. 

Let us leave this matter, my songs, 

and return to that which concerns us. 



THE GARRET 

Come, let us pity those who are better off than we 

are. 
Come, my friend, and remember 

that the rich have butlers and no friends. 
And we have friends and no butlers. 
Come, let us pity the married and the unmarried. 

Dawn enters with little feet 

like a gilded Pavlova, 
And I am near my desire. 
Nor has life in it aught better 
Than this hour of clear coolness, 

the hour of waking together. 



15 



THE GARDEN 

En robe de parade. 

Samain 

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall 

She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington 

Gardens, 
And she is dying piece-meal 

of a sort of emotional anaemia. 

And round about there is a rabble 

Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the 

very poor. 
They shall inherit the earth. 

In her is the end of breeding. 
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. 
She would like some one to speak to her, 
And is almost afraid that I 

will commit that indiscretion. 



ORTUS 

How have I laboured? 

How have I not laboured 

To bring her soul to birth. 

To give these elements a name and a centre 1 



i6 



She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid. 

She has no name, and no place. 

How have I laboured to bring her soul into 

separation; 
To give her a name and her being! 

Surely you are bound and entwined, 

You are mingled with the elements unborn; 

I have loved a stream and a shadow. 

I beseech you enter your life. ^ 

I beseech you learn to say " I " 
When I question you : 
For you are no part, but a whole; 
No portion, but a being. 



SALUTATION 

generation of the thoroughly smug 

and thoroughly uncomfortable, 

1 have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun, 
I have seen them with untidy families, 

I have seen their smiles full of teeth 
and heard ungainly laughter. 



17 



And I am happier than you are, 
And they were happier than I am; 
And the fish swim in the lake 

and do not even own clothing. 



SALUTATION THE SECOND 

You were praised, my books, 

because I had just come from the country; 
I was twenty years behind the times 

so you found an audience ready. 
I do not disown you, 

do not you disown your progeny. 

Here they stand without quaint devices. 

Here they are with nothing archaic about them. 

Watch the reporters spit. 

Watch the anger of the professors, 

Watch how the pretty ladies revile them : 

" Is this," they say, " the nonsense 

that we expect of poets? " 
" Where is the Picturesque? " 

" Where is the vertigo of emotion? " 
" No ! his first work was the best." 

" Poor Dear ! he has lost his illusions." 



i8 



Go, little naked and impudent songs, 

Go with a light foot ! 

(Or with two light feet, if it please you !) 

Go and dance shamelessly! 

Go with an impertinent frolic 1 

Greet the grave and the stodgy, 

Salute them with your thumbs at your noses. 

Here are your bells and confetti. 
Go ! rejuvenate things I 
Rejuvenate even " The Spectator." 

Go ! and make cat calls ! 
Dance and make people blush. 
Dance the dance of the phallus 

and tell anecdotes of Cybele I 
Speak of the indecorous conduct of the Gods ! 

(Tell it to Mr. Strachey) 

Ruffle the skirts of prudes, 

speak of their knees and ankles. 
But, above all, go to practical people — 

go! jangle their door-bells! 
Say that you do no work 

and that you will live forever. 



19 



THE SPRING 

Cydonian Spring with her attendant train, 

Meliads and water-girls. 

Stepping beneath a boisterous wind from Thrace, 

Throughout this sylvan place 

Spreads the bright tips, 

And every vine-stock is 

Clad in new brilliancies. 

And wild desire 
Falls like black lightning. 
O bewildered heart, 

Though every branch have back what last year lost. 
She, who moved here amid the cyclamen, 
Moves only now a clinging tenuous ghost. 



ALBATRE 

This lady in the white bath-robe which she calls a 
peignoir 

Is, for the time being, the mistress of my friend, 

And the delicate white feet of her little white dog 

Are not more delicate than she is. 

Nor would Gautier himself have despised their con- 
trasts in whiteness 



20 



As she sits in the great chair 
Between the two indolent candles. 



CAUSA 

I join these words for four people, 
Some others may overhear them, 
O world, I am sorry for you, 
You do not know these four people. 



COMMISSION 

Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied. 
Go also to the nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved- 

by-convention, 
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. 
Go as a great wave of cool water, 
Bear my contempt of oppressors. 

Speak against unconscious oppression, 

Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, 

Speak against bonds. 



21 



Go to the bourgeolse who is dying of her ennuis, 

Go to the women in suburbs. 

Go to the hideously wedded, 

Go to them whose failure is concealed, 

Go to the unluckily mated. 

Go to the bought wife. 

Go to the woman entailed. 

Go to those who have delicate lust, 
Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted. 
Go like a blight upon the dulness of the world; 
Go with your edge against this, 
Strengthen the subtle cords. 

Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles 
of the soul. 

Go in a friendly manner, 

Go with an open speech. 

Be eager to find new evils and new good. 

Be against all forms of oppression. 

Go to those who are thickened with middle age. 

To those who have lost their interest. 

Go to the adolescent who are smothered in family — 
Oh how hideous it is 



22 



To see three generations of one house gathered 

together ! 
It is like an old tree with shoots, 
And with some branches rotted and falling. 

Go out and defy opinion, 

Go against this vegetable bondage of the blood. 

Be against all sorts of mortmain. 



A PACT 

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman 
I have detested you long enough, 
I come to you as a grown child 
Who has had a pig-headed father; 
I am old enough now to make friends. 
It was you that broke the new wood, 
Now is a time for carving. 
We have one sap and one root — 
Let there be commerce between us. 



23 



SURGIT FAMA 

There is a truce among the gods, 
Kore is seen in the North 
Skirting the blue-gray sea 
In gilded and russet mantle. 

The com has again its mother and she, Leuconoe, 
That failed never women, 
Fails not the earth now. 

The tricksome Hermes is here; 

He moves behind me 

Eager to catch my words, 

Eager to spread them with rumour; 

To set upon them his change 

Crafty and subtle; 

To alter them to his purpose ; 

But do thou speak true, even to the letter; 

" Once more in Delos, once more is the altar 

a-quiver. 
Once more is the chant heard. 
Once more are the never abandoned gardens 
Full of gossip and old tales." 



24 



PREFERENCE 

It is true that you say the gods are more use to 

you than fairies, 
But for all that I have seen you 

on a high, white, noble horse, 
Like some strange queen in a story. 

It is odd that you should be covered with long robes 

and trailing tendrils and flowers; 
It is odd that you should be changing your face 

and resembling some other woman to 
plague me; 
It is odd that you should be hiding yourself 
In the cloud of beautiful women who do not 
concern me. 

And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind? 
You will say that I deserve this. 



DANCE FIGURE 

For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee 

Dark eyed, 

O woman of my dreams. 

Ivory sandaled. 



25 



There is none like thee among the dancers, ^ 

None with swift feet. 

I have not found thee in the tents, 
In the broken darkness. 
I have not found thee at the well-head 
Among the women with pitchers. 

Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark; 
Thy face as a river with lights. 

White as an almond are thy shoulders; 
As new almonds stripped from the husk. 

They guard thee not with eunuchs; 
Not with bars of copper. 

Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest. 
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in 
patterns, 

hast thou gathered about thee, 
O Nathat-Ikanaie, " Tree-at-the-river." 

As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me ; 
Thy fingers a frosted stream. 



26 



Thy maidens are white like pebbles; 
Their music about thee ! 

There is none like thee among the dancers; 
None with swift feet. 



APRIL 

Nympharum membra disjecta 

Three spirits came to me 

And drew me apart 

To where the olive boughs 

Lay stripped upon the ground: 

Pale carnage beneath bright mist. 



GENTILDONNA 

She passed and left no quiver in the veins, who 

now 
Moving among the trees, and clinging 

in the air she severed, 
Fanning the grass she walked on then, endures: 

Grey olive leaves beneath a rain-cold sky. 

27 



THE REST 

O helpless few in my country, 

remnant enslaved ! 

Artists broken against her, 
A-stray, lost in the villages. 
Mistrusted, spoken-against. 

Lovers of beauty, starved. 
Thwarted with systems. 
Helpless against the control; 

You who can not wear yourselves out 

By persisting to successes. 

You who can only speak. 

Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration; 

You of the finer sense. 
Broken against false knowledge. 
You who can know at first hand, 
Hated, shut in, mistrusted: 

Take thought: 

1 have weathered the storm, 
I have beaten out my exile. 



28 



LES MILLWIN 

The little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet. 
The mauve and greenish souls of the httle Millwins 
Were seen lying along the upper seats 
Like so many unused boas. 



The turbulent and undiscipllne'd host of art 

students — 
The rigorous deputation from " Slade " — 
Was before them. 
With arms exalted, with fore-arms 
Crossed in great futuristic X's, the art students 
Exulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra. 

And the little Millwins beheld these things; 
With their large and anaemic eyes they looked out 
upon this configuration. 

Let us therefore mention the fact. 
For it seems to us worthy of record. 



29 



FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS 

Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions, 
Let us express our envy of the man with a steady 

job and no worry about the future. 
You are very idle, my songs. 
I fear you will come to a bad end. 
You stand about in the streets, 
You loiter at the corners and bus-stops. 
You do next to nothing at all. 

You do not even express our inner nobilities, 
You will come to a very bad end. 

And I? 

I have gone half cracked, 

I have talked to you so much that 

I almost see you about me, 
Insolent little beasts, shameless, devoid of clothing I 

But you, newest song of the lot. 

You are not old enough to have done much mischief, 

I will get you a green coat out of China 

With dragons worked upon It, 



30 



I will get you the scarlet silk trousers 

From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria 

Novella, 
Lest they say we are lacking in taste, 
Or that there is no caste in this family. 



A SONG OF THE DEGREES 

I 

Rest me with Chinese colours, 
For I think the glass is evil. 

II 

The wind moves above the wheat — 
With a silver crashing, 
A thin war of metal. 

I have known the golden disc, 
I have seen it melting above me. 
I have known the stone-bright place. 
The hall of clear colours. 



31 



Ill 

O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours ! 
O light bound and bent in, O soul of the captive, 
Why am I warned? Why am I sent away? 
Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust? 
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold! 
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence! 



ITE 

Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and 

from the intolerant. 
Move among the lovers of perfection alone. 
Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light 
And take your wounds from it gladly. 



DUM CAPITOLIUM SCANDET 

How many will come after me 

singing as well as I sing, none better; 
Telling the heart of their truth 

as I have taught them to tell It; 
Fruit of my seed, 

O my unnameable children. 



32 



Know then that I loved you from afore-time, 
Clear speakers, naked in the sun, untrammelled. 



To Ka\6v 

Even in my dreams you have denied yourself to 

me 
And sent me only your handmaids. 



THE STUDY IN AESTHETICS 

The very small children in patched clothing, 
Being smitten with an unusual wisdom. 
Stopped in their play as she passed them 
And cried up from their cobbles : 

Guarda! A hi, guarda! ch' e be' a */ 

But three years after this 

I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not 

know — 
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young 

Dantes and thirty-four Catulli; 

* Bella, 

33 



And there had been a great catch of sardines, 

And his elders 

Were packing them in the great wooden boxes 

For the market in Brescia, and he 

Leapt about, snatching at the bright fi^h 

And getting in both of their ways; 

And in vain they commanded him to sta fermo! 

And when they would not let him arrange 

The fish in the boxes 

He stroked those which were already arranged, 

Murmuring for his own satisfaction 

This identical phrase: 

Ch' e be' a. 
And at this I was mildly abashed. 



THE BELLAIRES 

Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen 
Mach' ich die kleinen L'teder 

The good Bellaires 

Do not understand the conduct of this world's 

affairs. 
In fact they understood them so badly 
That they have had to cross the Channel. 



34 



Nine lawyers, four counsels, five judges and three 
proctors of the King, 

Together with the respective wives, husbands, sis- 
ters and heterogeneous connections of the good 
Bellaires, 

Met to discuss their affairs; 

But the good Bellaires have so little understood 
their affairs 

That now there is no one at all 

Who can understand any affair of theirs. Yet 

Fourteen hunters still eat in the stables of 

The good Squire Bellaire; 

But these may not suffer attainder. 

For they may not belong to the good Squire 
Bellaire 

But to his wife. 

On the contrary, if they do not belong to his wife, 

He will plead 

A " freedom from attainder " 

For twelve horses and also for twelve boarhounds 

From Charles the Fourth; 

And a further freedom for the remainder 

Of horses, from Henry the Fourth. 

But the judges, 

Being free of mediaeval scholarship. 

Will pay no attention to this, 



35 



And there will be only the more confusion, 
Replevin, estoppel, espavin and what not. 

Nine lawyers, four counsels, etc.. 
Met to discuss their affairs. 
But the sole result was bills 
From lawyers to whom no one was indebted, 
And even the lawyers 

Were uncertain who was supposed to be indebted 
to them. 

Wherefore the good Squire Bellaire 
Resides now at Agde and Biaucaire. 
To Carcassonne, Pui, and Alais 
He fareth from day to day. 
Or takes the sea air 
Between Marseilles 
And Beziers. 

And for all this I have considerable regret. 
For the good Bellaires 
Are very charming people. 

THE NEW CAKE OF SOAP 

Lo, how it gleams and glistens in the sun 
Like the cheek of a Chesterton. 



36 



SALVATIONISTS 

I 

Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection — 
We shall get ourselves rather disliked. 

II 

Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect 

The very excellent term Riisticus. 

Let us apply it in all its opprobrium 

To those to whom it applies. 

And you may decline to make them immortal, 

For we shall consider them and their state 

In delicate 

Opulent silence. 

Ill 

Come, my songs. 

Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities 

Beginning with Mumpodorus; 

And against this sea of vulgarities — 

Beginning with Nimmim; 

And against this sea of imbeciles — 

All the Bulmenian literati. 



37 



EPITAPH 

Leucis, who intended a Grand Passion, 
Ends with a willingness-to-oblige. 



ARIDES 

The bashful Arldes 

Has married an ugly wife, 

He was bored with his manner of life. 

Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as 

Well do this as anything else. 

Saying within his heart, " I am no use to myself, 
" Let her, if she wants me, take me." 
He went to his doom. 



THE BATH TUB 

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain. 
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid. 
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, 
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory 
lady. 



38 



AMITIES 

Old friends the most. 
W. B. Y. 

I 

To one, on returning certain years after. 

You wore the same quite correct clothing, 
You took no pleasure at all in my triumphs, 
You had the same old air of condescension 
Mingled with a curious fear 

That I, myself, might have enjoyed them. 

Te voila, mon Boiirrienne, you also shall be im- 
mortal. 



II 

To another. 

And we say good-bye to you also. 
For you seem never to have discovered 
That your relationship is wholly parasitic; 
Yet to our feasts you bring neither 
Wit, nor good spirits, nor the pleasing attitudes 
Of discipleship. 



39 



Ill 

But you, bos amic, we keep on, 

For to you we owe a real debt: 

In spite of your obvious flaws, 

You once discovered a moderate chop-house. 

IV 

Iste fuit vir incultus, 

Deo laus, quod est sepultuSy 

Vermes habent eius vultum 

A-a-a-a — A-men. 
Ego autem jovialis 
Gaudero contubernalis 
Cum jocunda femina. 



MEDITATIO 

When I carefully consider the curious habits of 

dogs 
I am compelled to conclude 
That man is the superior animal. 

When I consider the curious habits of man 
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled. 



40 



TO DIVES 

Who am I to condemn you, O Dives, 
I who am as much embittered 
With poverty 
As you are with useless riches? 



LADIES 

Agathas 

Four and forty lovers had Agathas in the old 

days, 
All of whom she refused; 
And now she turns to me seeking love. 
And her hair also is turning. 

Young Lady 

I have fed your lar with poppies, 

I have adored you for three full years; 

And now you grumble because your dress does not 

fit 
And because I happen to say so. 



41 



Leshia Ilia 

Memnon, Memnon, that lady 

Who used to walk about amongst us 

With such gracious uncertainty, 

Is now wedded 

To a British householder. 

Lugete, Venere! Ltigete, Cupidinesque! 



Passing 

Flawless as Aphrodite, 

Thoroughly beautiful, 

Brainless, 

The faint odour of your patchouli. 

Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your 

chin, 
Assails me, and concerns me almost as little. 



PHYLLIDULA 

Phyllidula is scrawny but amorous. 

Thus have the gods awarded her 

That in pleasure she receives more than she can give; 

If she does not count this blessed 

Let her change her religion. 



42 



THE PATTERNS 

Erinna is a model parent, 

Her children have never discovered her adulteries. 

Lalage is also a model parent, 

Her offspring are fat and happy. 



CODA 

O my songs, 

Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into 

people's faces, 
Will you find your lost dead among them? 



THE SEEING EYE 

The small dogs look at the big dogs; 
They observe unwieldly dimensions 
And curious imperfections of odor. 

Here is a formal male group: 

The young men look upon their seniors. 



43 



They consider the elderly mind 

And observe its inexplicable correlations. 

Said Tsin-Tsu : 

It is only in small dogs and the young 

That we find minute observation. 



i ANCORA 

Good God! They say you are risque, 

O canzonetti ! 

We who went out into the four A. M. of the world 

Composing our albas, 

We who shook off our dew with the rabbits, 

We who have seen even Artemis a-binding her 

sandals. 
Have we ever heard the like? 
O mountains of Hellas ! ! 

Gather about me, O Muses ! 

When we sat upon the granite brink in Helicon 

Clothed in the tattered sunlight, 

O Muses with delicate shins, 

O Muses with delectable knee-joints. 

When we splashed and were splashed with 



44 



The lucid Castillan spray, 

Had we ever such an epithet cast upon us ! ! 



II 



DOMPNA POIS DE ME NO'US CAL " 

A TRANSLATION 

From the PROVENgAL of En Bertrans de Born 

Lady, since you care nothing for me, 

And since you have shut me away from you 

Causelessly, 

I know not where to go seeking, 

For certainly 

I will never again gather 

Joy so rich, and if I find not ever 

A lady with look so speaking 

To my desire, worth yours whom I have lost, 

I'll have no other love at any cost. 

And since I could not find a peer to you, 

Neither one so fair, nor of such heart, 

So eager and alert. 

Nor with such art 

In attire, nor so gay 

Nor with gift so bountiful and so true. 



45 



I will go out a-searching, 
Culling from each a fair trait 
To make me a borrowed lady 
Till I again find you ready. 

Bels Cembelins, I take of you your colour, 

For it's your own, and your glance 

Where love is, 

A proud thing I do here, 

For, as to colour and eyes 

I shall have missed nothing at all, 

Having yours. 

I ask of Midons Aehs (of Montfort) 

Her straight speech free-running, 

That my phantom lack not in cunning. 

At Chalais of the Viscountess, I would 

That she give me outright 

Her two hands and her throat, 

So take I my road 

To Rochechouart, 

Swift-foot to my Lady Anhes, 

Seeing that Tristan's lady Iseutz had never 

Such grace of locks, I do ye to wit, 

Though she'd the far fame for it. 



46 



Of Audiart at Malemort, 

Though she with a full heart 

Wish me ill, 

I'd have her form that's laced 

So cunningly, 

Without blemish, for her love 

Breaks not nor turns aside. 

I of Miels-de-ben demand 

Her straight fresh body, 

She is so supple and young. 

Her robes can but do her wrong. 

Her white teeth, of the Lady Faidita 

I ask, and the fine courtesy 

She hath to welcome one. 

And such replies she lavishes 

Within her nest; 

Of Bels Mirals, the rest, 

Tall stature and gaiety, 

To make these avail 

She knoweth well, betide 

No change nor turning aside. 

Ah, Bels Senher, Maent, at last 

I ask naught from you, 

Save that I have such hunger for 



47 



This phantom 

As I've for you, such flame-lap, 

And yet I'd rather 

Ask of you than hold another, 

Mayhap, right close and kissed. 

Ah, lady, why have you cast 

Me out, knowing you hold me so fast ! 



THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON 

An image of Lethe, 

and the fields 
Full of faint light 

but golden, 
Gray cliffs, 

and beneath them 
A sea 
Harsher than granite, 

unstill, never ceasing; 
High forms 

with the movement of gods. 
Perilous aspect; 

And one said: 
" This is Actaeon." 

Actaeon of golden greaves! 



48 



Over fair meadows, 

Over the cool face of that field, 

Unstill, ever moving, 

Hosts of an ancient people. 

The silent cortege. 



AFTER CH'U YUAN 

I will get me to the wood 

Where the gods walk garlanded in wistaria. 

By the silver blue flood 

move others with ivory cars. 
There come forth many maidens 

to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend, 
For there are leopards drawing the cars. 

I will walk in the glade, 

I will come out of the new thicket 

and accost the procession of maidens. 

LIU CH'E 

The rustling of the silk is discontinued. 

Dust drifts over the court-yard. 

There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves 



49 



Scurry into heaps and lie still, 

And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: 

A wet leaf that clings to the threshold. 



FAN-PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL 
LORD 

A fan of white silk, 

clear as frost on the grass-blade. 
You also are laid aside. 



TS'AI CHI'H 

The petals fall in the fountain, 

the orange-coloured rose-leaves, 
Their ochre clings to the stone. 



IN A STATION OF THE METRO 

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 
Petals on a wet, black bough. 



50 



ALBA 

As cool as the pale wet leaves 

of lily-of-the-valley 
She lay beside me in the dawn. 

HEATHER 

The black panther treads at my side, 

And above my fingers 

There float the petal-like flames. 

The milk-white girls 
Unbend from the holly-trees, 
And their snow-white leopard 
Watches to follow our trace. 



THE FAUN 

Ha ! sir, I have seen you sniffing and snoozling about 

among my flowers. 

And what, pray, do you know about horticulture, 

you capriped? 



51 



" Come, Auster, come, Apeliota, 
And see the faun in our garden. 
But If you move or speak 
This thing will run at you 
And scare itself to spasms." 



COITUS 

The gilded phaloi of the crocuses 

are thrusting at the spring air. 
Here is there naught of dead gods 
But a procession of festival, 
A procession, O Giulio Romano, 
Fit for your spirit to dwell in. 
Dione, your nights are upon us. 

The dew is upon the leaf. 
The night about us is restless. 



THE ENCOUNTER 

All the while they were talking the new morality 
Her eyes explored me. 
And when I arose to go 



52 



Her fingers were like the tissue 
Of a Japanese paper napkin. 



TEMPORA 

lo ! lo ! Tamuz ! 

The Dryad stands in my court-yard 

With plaintive, querulous crying, 

(Tamuz. lo ! Tamuz!) 

Oh, no, she is not crying: " Tamuz." 

She says, " May my poems be printed this week? 

The god Pan is afraid to ask you, 

May my poems be printed this week? " 



BLACK SLIPPERS: BELLOTTI 

At the table beyond us 

With her little suede slippers off, 

With her white-stockin'd feet 

Carefully kept from the floor by a napkin, 

She converses : 

Connaissez-vous Ostende? 
The gurgling Italian lady on the other side of the 
restaurant 



53 



Replies with a certain hauteur, 

But I await with patience 

To see how Celestine will re-enter her slippers. 

She re-enters them with a groan. 



SOCIETY 

The family position was waning, 
And on this account the little Aurelia, 
Who had laughed on eighteen summers. 
Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus. 



IMAGE FROM D'ORLEANS 

Young men riding in the street 
In the bright new season 
Spur without reason. 
Causing their steeds to leap. 

And at the pace they keep 
Their horses' armoured feet 
Strike sparks from the cobbled street 
In the bright new season. 



54 



PAPYRUS 

Spring. . . 
Too long. . . 
Gongula. . . 



"lONE, DEAD THE LONG YEAR" 

Empty are the ways, 

Empty are the ways of this land 

And the flowers 

Bend over with heavy heads. 
They bend in vain. 
Empty are the ways of this land 

Where lone 
Walked once, and now does not walk 
But seems like a person just gone. 

ifieppu) 

Thy soul 
Grown delicate with satieties, 
Atthis. 

O Atthis, 
I long for thy lips. 



5S 



I long for thy narrow breasts, 
Thou restless, ungathered. 



SHOP GIRL 

For a moment she rested against me 
Like a swallow half blown to the wall. 
And they talk of Swinburne's women. 
And the shepherdess meeting with Guido. 
And the harlots of Baudelaire. 



TO FORMIANUS' YOUNG LADY 
FRIEND 

After Valerius Catullus 

All Hail! young lady with a nose 

by no means too small. 
With a foot unbeautiful, 

and with eyes that are not black, 
With fingers that are not long, and with a mouth 

undry. 
And with a tongue by no means too elegant, 
You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of 
cosmetics, 

56 



And they call you beautiful In the province, 
And you are even compared to Lesbia. 

O most unfortunate age ! 



TAME CAT 

" It rests me to be among beautiful women. 
Why should one always lie about such matters? 



I repeat: 

It rests me to converse with beautiful women 

Even though we talk nothing but nonsense, 



The purring of the invisible antennae 
Is both stimulating and delightful." 



L'ART, 1 910 

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, 
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our 
eyes. 



57 



SIMULACRA 

Why does the horse-faced lady of just the unmen- 
tionable age 

Walk down Longacre reciting Swinburne to herself, 
inaudibly? 

Why does the small child in the soiled-white imita- 
tion fur coat 

Crawl in the very black gutter beneath the grape 
stand? 

Why does the really handsome young woman ap- 
proach me in Sackville Street 

Undeterred by the manifest age of my trappings? 

WOMEN BEFORE A SHOP 

The gew-gaws of false amber and false turquoise 

attract them. 
" Like to like nature " : these agglutinous yellows I 

EPILOGUE 

O chansons foregoing 
You were a seven days' wonder, 
When you came out in the magazines 
You created considerable stir in Chicago, 



5! 



And now you are stale and worn out, 
You're a very depleted fashion, 
A hoop-skirt, a calash. 
An homely, transient antiquity. 

Only emotion remains. 

Your emotions? 

Are those of a maitre-de-cafe. 

THE SOCIAL ORDER 

I 

This government official 

Whose wife is several years his senior, 

Has such a caressing air 

When he shakes hands with young ladies. 

II 

(Pompes Funebres) 

This old lady. 

Who was " so old that she was an atheist," 

Is now surrounded 

By six candles and a crucifix. 

While the second wife of a nephew 

59 



Makes hay with the things in her house. 

Her two cats 

Go before her into Avernus; 

A sort of chloroformed suttee, 

And it is to be hoped that their spirits will walk 

With their tails up, 

And with a plaintive, gentle mewing. 

For it is certain that she has left on this earth 

No sound 

Save a squabble of female connections. 



THE TEA SHOP 

The girl in the tea shop 

is not so beautiful as she was, 
The August has worn against her. 
She does not get up the stairs so eagerly; 
Yes, she also will turn middle-aged. 
And the glow of youth that she spread about us 

as she brought us our muffins 
Will be spread about us no longer. 

She also will turn middle-aged. 



60 



ANCIENT MUSIC 

Winter is icummen in, 
Lhude sing Goddamm, 
Raineth drop and staineth slop, 
And how the wind doth ramm ! 

Sing: Goddamm. 
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, 
An ague hath my ham. 
Freezeth river, turneth liver. 

Damn you, sing: Goddamm. 
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm, 

So 'gainst the winter's balm. 
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm, 
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM. 

Note. — This is not folk music, but Dr. Ker writes that the tune 
is to be found under the Latin words of a very ancient canon. 



THE LAKE ISLE 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a httle tobacco- 
shop, 
With the little bright boxes 

piled up neatly upon the shelves 

6i 



And the loose fragrant cavendish 

and the shag, 
And the bright Virginia 

loose under the bright glass cases, 
And a pair of scales not too greasy, 
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in 

passing, 
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves. 
Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 

or install me in any profession 
Save this damn'd profession of writing, 

where one needs one's brains all the time. 



EPITAPHS 

Fu I 

Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill, 
Alas, he died of alcohol. 

Li Po 

And Li Po also died drunk. 
He tried to embrace a moon 
In the Yellow River. 



62 



OUR CONTEMPORARIES 

When the Taihaitian princess 
Heard that he had decided, 

She rushed out into the sunlight and swarmed up 
a cocoanut palm tree, 

But he returned to this island 

And wrote ninety Petrarchan sonnets. 

Note. — II s'agit d'un jeune poete qui a suivi le culte de Gauguin 
jusqu'a Tahiti meme (et qui vit encore). Etant fort bel homme, 
quand la princesse bistre entendit qu'il voulait lui accorder ses 
faveurs elle montra son allegresse de la fagon dont nous venons de 
parler. Malheureusement ses poemes ne sont remplis que de ses 
propres subjectivites, style Victorien de la " Georgian Anthology." 



ANCIENT WISDOM, RATHER 
COSMIC 

So Shu dreamed. 

And having dreamed that he was a bird, a bee, and 
a butterfly, 

He was uncertain why he should try to feel like any- 
thing else, 

Hence his contentment. 

63 



THE THREE POETS 

Candidia has taken a new lover 

And three poets are gone into mourning. 

The first has written a long elegy to " Chloris," 

To *' Chloris chaste and cold," his " only Chloris." 

The second has written a sonnet 

upon the mutability of woman, 
And the third writes an epigram to Candidia. 



THE GYPSY 

" Est-ce que vous avez vu des autres — des camarades — avec des 
singes ou des ours? " 

A Stray Gipsy — A.D. 1912 

That was the top of the walk, when he said: 
" Have you seen any others, any of our lot, 
" With apes or bears? " 

— A brown upstanding fellow 
Not like the half-castes, 

up on the wet road near Clermont. 
The wind came, and the rain, 
And mist clotted about the trees in the valley, 
And I'd the long ways behind me, 

gray Aries and Blaucaire, 
And he said, " Have you seen any of our lot? " 



64 



I'd seen a lot of his lot . . . 

ever since Rhodez, 
Coming down from the fair 

of St. John, 
With caravans, but never an ape or a bear. 



THE GAME OF CHESS 

Dogmatic Statement Concerning the Game of Chess: 
Theme for a Series of Pictures 

Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens. 
Striking the board, falling in strong " L "s of 

colour, 
Reaching and striking in angles, 

holding lines in one colour. 
This board is alive with light; 

these pieces are living in form, 
Their moves break and reform the pattern: 

Luminous green from the rooks. 
Clashing with " X "s of queens, 

looped with the knight-leaps. 

" Y " pawns, cleaving, embanking! 
Whirl ! Centripetal ! Mate ! King down in the 
vortex, 



65 



Clash, leaping of bands, straight strips of hard 

colour, 
Blocked lights working in. Escapes. Renewal of 

contest. 



PROVINCIA DESERTA 

At Rochecoart, 
Where the hills part 

in three ways, 
And three v^alleys, full of winding roads, 
Fork out to south and north. 
There is a place of trees . . . gray with lichen. 
I have walked there 

thinking of old days. 
At Chalais 

is a pleached arbour; 
Old pensioners and old protected women 
Have the right there — 

it is charity. 
I have crept over old rafters, 

peering down 
Over the Dronne, 

over a stream full of lilies. 
Eastward the road lies, 

Aubeterre is eastward, 



66 



With a garrulous old man at the inn. 
I know the roads in that place : 
Mareuil to the north-east, 

La Tour, 
There are three keeps near Mareuil, 
And an old woman, 

glad to hear Arnaut, 
Glad to lend one dry clothing. 

I have walked 

into Perigord, 
I have seen the torch-flames, high-leaping, 
Painting the front of that church; 
Heard, under the dark, whirling laughter. 
I have looked back over the stream 

and seen the high building. 
Seen the long minarets, the white shafts. 
I have gone in Ribeyrac 

and in Sarlat, 
I have climbed rickety stairs, heard talk of Croy, 
Walked over En Bertran's old layout, 
Have seen Narbonne, and Cahors and Chalus, 
Have seen Excideuil, carefully fashioned. 

I have said: 

" Here such a one walked. 



67 



*' Here Coeur-de-LIon was slain. 

" Here was good singing. 
" Here one man hastened his step. 

" Here one lay panting." 
I have looked south from Hautefort, 

thinking of Montaignac, southward. 
I have lain in Rocafixada, 

level with sunset, 
Have seen the copper come down 

tingeing the mountains, 
I have seen the fields, pale, clear as an emerald, 
Sharp peaks, high spurs, distant castles. 
I have said: " The old roads have lain here. 
" Men have gone by such and such valleys 
" Where the great halls are closer together." 
I have seen Foix on its rock, seen Toulouse, and 

Aries greatly altered, 
I have seen the ruined " Dorata." 

I have said: 
" Riquier! Guido." 

I have thought of the second Troy, 
Some little prized place in Auvergnat: 
Two men tossing a coin, one keeping a castle. 
One set on the highway to sing. 

He sang a woman. 
Auvergne rose to the song; 



68 



The Dauphin backed him. 
" The castle to Austors! " 

" Pieire kept the singing — 
'* A fair man and a pleasant." 

He won the lady, 
Stole her away for himself, kept her against armed 

force : 
So ends that story. 
That age is gone; 
Pieire de Maensac is gone. 
I have walked over these roads; 
I have thought of them living. 



69 



CATHAY 

FOR THE MOST PART FROM THE CHINESE OF RIHAKU, 

FROM THE NOTES OF THE LATE ERNEST 

FENOLLOSA, AND THE DECIPHERINGS 

OF THE PROFESSORS MORI 

AND ARIGA 



SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU 

Here we are, picking the first fern-shoots 

And saying: When shall we get back to our 

country? 
Here we are because we have the Ken-nin for our 

foemen, 
We have no comfort because of these Mongols. 
We grub the soft fern-shoots, 
When anyone says " Return," the others are full of 

sorrow. 
Sorrowful minds, sorrow is strong, we are hungry 

and thirsty. 
Our defence is not yet made sure, no one can let 

his friend return. 
We grub the old fern-stalks. 
We say: Will we be let to go back in October? 
There is no ease in royal affairs, we have no com- 
fort. 
Our sorrow is bitter, but we would not return to 

our country. 
What flower has come into blossom? 
Whose chariot? The General's. 
Horses, his horses even, are tired. They were 

strong. 
We have no rest, three battles a month. 



73 



By heaven, his horses are tired. 

The generals are on them, the soldiers are by them. 

The horses are well trained, the generals have ivory 

arrows and quivers ornamented with fish-skin. 
The enemy^is swift, we must be careful. 
When we set out, the willows were drooping with 

spring. 
We come back, in the snow. 
We go slowly, we are hungry and thirsty. 
Our mind is full of sorrow, who will know of our 

grief? 

By Bunno 
Reputedly iioo B.C. 



THE BEAUTIFUL TOILET 

Blue, blue is the grass about the river 

And the willows have overfilled the close garden. 

And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her 

youth. 
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door. 
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand, 

And she was a courtezan in the old days. 
And she has married a sot, 



74 



Who now goes drunkenly out 
And leaves her too much alone. 

By Met Sheng 
B.C. 140 



THE RIVER SONG 

This boat Is of shato-wood, and its gunwales are 

cut magnolia, 
Musicians with jewelled flutes and with pipes of gold 
Fill full the sides In rows, and our wine 
Is rich for a thousand cups. 

We carry singing girls, drift with the drifting water, 
Yet Sennin needs 

A yellow stork for a charger, and all our seamen 
Would follow the white gulls or ride them. 
Kutsu's prose song 
Hangs with the sun and moon. 

King So's terraced palace 

is now but a barren hill. 
But I draw pen on this barge 
Causing the five peaks to tremble. 
And I have joy in these words 

like the joy of blue islands. 
(If glory could last forever 
Then the waters of Han would flow northward.) 

75 



And I have moped in the Emperor's garden, await- 
ing an order-to-write I 

I looked at the dragon-pond, with its willow-col- 
oured water 

Just reflecting the sky's tinge, 

And heard the five-score nightingales aimlessly sing- 
ing. 

The eastern wind brings the green colour into the 

island grasses at Yei-shu, 
The purple house and the crimson are full of Spring 

softness. 
South of the pond the willow-tips are half-blue and 

bluer, 
Their cords tangle in mist, against the brocade-like 

palace. 
Vine-strings a hundred feet long hang down from 

carved railings, 
And high over the willows, the fine birds sing to each 

other, and listen. 
Crying — " Kwan, Kuan," for the early wind, and 

the feel of it. 
The wind bundles itself into a bluish cloud and wan^ 

ders off. 
Over a thousand gates, over a thousand doors are 

the sounds of spring singing, 



76 



And the Emperor is at Ko. 

Five clouds hang aloft, bright on the purple sky, 

The imperial guards come forth from the golden 
house with their armour a-gleaming. 

The Emperor in his jewelled car goes out to inspect 
his flowers. 

He goes out to Hori, to look at the wing-flapping 
storks, 

He returns by way of Sei rock, to hear the new 
nightingales. 

For the gardens at Jo-run are full of new nightin- 
gales. 

Their sound is mixed in this flute. 

Their voice is in the twelve pipes here. 

By Rihaku 
8th century A.D. 



THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: 
A LETTER 

While my hair was still cut straight across my fore- 
head 
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. 
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, 
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. 



77 



And we went on living in the village of Chokan: 
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. 

At fourteen I married My Lord you. 

I never laughed, being bashful. 

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. 

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. 

At fifteen I stopped scowling, 
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours 
Forever and forever and forever. 
Why should I climb the look out? 

At sixteen you departed. 

You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirl- 
ing eddies. 

And you have been gone five months. 

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. 

You dragged your feet when you went out. 

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different 
mosses, 

Too deep to clear them away ! 

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. 

The paired butterflies are already yellow with 
August 

Over the grass in the West garden; 



78 



They hurt me. 

I grow older. 

If you are coming down through the narrows of the 

river Kiang, 
Please let me know beforehand, 
And I will come out to meet you 

As far as Cho-fu-Sa, 

By Rihaku 



THE JEWEL STAIRS' GRIEVANCE 

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew, 
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings, 
And I let down the crystal curtain 
And watch the moon through the clear autumn. 

By Rihaku 

Note. — Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, there- 
fore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, there- 
fore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, 
therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has 
come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but 
has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because 
she utters no direct reproach. 



79 



POEM BY THE BRIDGE AT 
TEN-SHIN 

March has come to the bridge head, 

Peach boughs and apricot boughs hang over a 
thousand gates, 

At morning there are flowers to cut the heart. 

And evening drives them on the eastward-flowing 
waters. 

Petals are on the gone waters and on the going, 
And on the back-swirling eddies. 

But to-day's men are not the men of the old days. 

Though they hang in the same way over the bridge- 
rail. 

The sea's colour moves at the dawn 

And the princes still stand in rows, about the throne, 

And the moon falls over the portals of Sei-go-yo, 

And clings to the walls and the gate-top. 

With head gear glittering against the cloud and sun, 

The lords go forth from the court, and into far 

borders. 
They ride upon dragon-like horses, 
Upon horses with head-trappings of yellow metal. 
And the streets make way for their passage. 
Haughty their passing, 



80 



Haughty their steps as they go in to great banquets, 

To high halls and curious food, 

To the perfumed air and girls dancing, 

To clear flutes and clear singing; 

To the dance of the seventy couples; 

To the mad chase through the gardens. 

Night and day are given over to pleasure 

And they think It will last a thousand autumns, 

Unwearying autumns. 
For them the yellow dogs howl portents in vain. 
And what are they compared to the lady Riokushu, 

That was cause of hate ! 
Who among them is a man like Han-rei 

Who departed alone with his mistress, 
With her hair unbound, and he his own skiffsman ! 

By Rihaku 



LAMENT OF THE FRONTIER 
GUARD 

By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand. 
Lonely from the beginning of time until now ! 
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn. 
I climb the towers and towers 

to watch out the barbarous land: 
Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert. 



There is no wall left to this village. 

Bones white with a thousand frosts, 

High heaps, covered with trees and grass; 

Who brought this to pass? 

Who has brought the flaming imperial anger? 

Who has brought the army with drums and with 

kettle-drums? 
Barbarous kings. 

A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn, 
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle king- 
dom. 
Three hundred and sixty thousand, 
And sorrow, sorrow like rain. 
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning. 
Desolate, desolate fields, 
And no children of warfare upon them. 

No longer the men for offence and defence. 
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the 

North Gate, 
With Rihoku's name forgotten. 
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers. 

By Ri/iaku 



82 



EXILE'S LETTER 

To So-kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor 
of Gen. 

Now I remember that you built me a special tavern 

By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin. 

With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for 
songs and laughter 

And we were drunk for month on month, forgetting 
the kings and princes. 

Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and 
from the west border. 

And with them, and with you especially 

There was nothing at cross purpose. 

And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of moun- 
tain-crossing. 

If only they could be of that fellowship. 

And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and 
without regret. 

And then I was sent off to South Wei, 

smothered in laurel groves, 
And you to the north of Raku-hoku, 
Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories in 

common. 
And then, when separation had come to its worst. 



83 



We met, and travelled Into Sen-Go, 

Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and 

twisting waters, 
into a valley of the thousand bright flowers, 
That was the first valley; 
And into ten thousand valleys full of voices and 

pine-winds. 
And with silver harness and reins of gold. 
Out come the East of Kan foreman and his com- 
pany. 
And there came also the " True man " of Shi-yo to 

meet me, 
Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ. 
In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us more 

Sennin music, 
Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix 

broods. 
The foreman of Kan Chu, drunk, danced 

because his long sleeves wouldn't keep still 
With that music playing. 
And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my 

head on his lap, 
And my spirit so high it was all over the heavens. 
And before the end of the day we were scattered like 

stars, or rain. 



84 



I had to be off to So, far away over the waters, 
You back to your river-bridge. 

And your father, who was brave as a leopard, 

Was governor in Hei Shu, and put down the bar- 
barian rabble. 

And one May he had you send for me, 
despite the long distance. 

And what with broken wheels and so on, I won't say 
it wasn't hard going. 

Over roads twisted like sheep's guts. 

And I was still going, late in the year, 

in the cutting wind from the North, 

And thinking how little you cared for the cost, 
and you caring enough to pay it. 

And what a reception: 

Red jade cups, food well set on a blue jewelled table. 

And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning. 

And you would walk out with me to the western 
corner of the castle. 

To the dynastic temple, with water about it clear as 
blue jade. 

With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs 
and drums. 

With ripples Hke dragon-scales, going grass green 
on the water, 



85 



Pleasure lasting, with courtezans, going and coming 

without hindrance. 
With the willow flakes falling like snow, 
And the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset. 
And the water a hundred feet deep reflecting green 

eyebrows 
— Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young 

moonlight. 
Gracefully painted — 
And the girls singing back at each other, 
Dancing in transparent brocade. 
And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it, 
Tossing it up under the clouds. 

And all this comes to an end. 
And is not again to be met with. 
I went up to the court for examination. 
Tried Layu's luck, offered the Choyo song, 
And got no promotion, 

and went back to the East Mountains 
white-headed. 
And once again, later, we met at the South bridge- 
head. 
And then the crowd broke up, you went north to 

San palace. 
And if you ask how I regret that parting: 

It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end 
Confused, whirled in a tangle. 

86 



What is the use of talking, and there is no end of 

talking, 
There is no end of things in the heart. 
I call in the boy, 
Have him sit on his knees here 

To seal this, 
And send it a thousand miles, thinking. 

By Rihaku 

From Rihaku 
FOUR POEMS OF DEPARTURE 

Light rain is on the light dust 

The ivilloivs of the inn-yard 

fVill be going greener and greener, 

But you, Sir, had better take ivine ere your departure. 

For you ivill have no friends about you 

When you come to the gates of Go. 

(or Omakitsu) 

SEPARATION ON THE RIVER 
KIANG 

Ko-Jin goes west from Ko-kaku-ro, 

The smoke-flowers are blurred over the river. 

His lone sail blots the far sky. 

And now I see only the river. 

The long Kiang, reaching heaven. 



87 



TAKING LEAVE OF A FRIEND 

Blue mountains to the north of the walls, 
White river winding about them; 
Here we must make separation 
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass. 
Mind like a floating wide cloud, 
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances 
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. 
Our horses neigh to each other 
as we are departing. 

LEAVE-TAKING NEAR SHOKU 

" Sanso, King of Shoku, built roads " 

They say the roads of Sanso are steep, 
Sheer as the mountains. 
The walls rise in a man's face. 
Clouds grow out of the hill 

at his horse's bridle. 
Sweet trees are on the paved way of the Shin, 
Their trunks burst through the paving. 
And freshets are bursting their ice 

in the midst of Shoku, a proud city. 

Men's fates are already set, 
There is no need of asking diviners. 



THE CITY OF CHOAN 

The phoenix are at play on their terrace. 

The phoenix are gone, the river flows on alone. 

Flowers and grass 

Cover over the dark path 

where lay the dynastic house of the Go. 
The bright cloths and bright caps of Shin 
Are now the base of old hills. 

The Three Mountains fall through the far heaven, 
The isle of White Heron 

splits the two streams apart. 
Now the high clouds cover the sun 
And I can not see Choan afar 
And I am sad. 



SOUTH-FOLK IN COLD COUNTRY 

The Dai horse neighs against the bleak wind of 

Etsu, 
The birds of Etsu have no love for En, in the north, 
Emotion is born out of habit. 
Yesterday we went out of the Wild-Goose gate, 



89 



To-day from the Dragon-Pen,* 
Surprised. Desert turmoil. Sea sun. 
Flying snow bewilders the barbarian heaven. 
Lice swarm like ants over our accoutrements. 
Mind and spirit drive on the feathery banners. 
Hard fight gets no reward. 
Loyalty is hard to explain. 
Who will be sorry for General Rishogu, 

the swift moving, 
Whose white head is lost for this province? 



SENNIN POEM BY KAKUHAKU 

The red and green kingfishers 

flash between the orchids and clover, 
One bird casts its gleam on another. 

Green vines hang through the high forest, 
They weave a whole roof to the mountain, 
The lone man sits with shut speech, 
He purrs and pats the clear strings. 

* I.e., we have been warring from one end of the empire to the 
other, now east, now west, on each border. 



90 



He throws his heart up through the sky, 
He bites through the flower pistil 

and brings up a fine fountain. 
The red-pine-tree god looks on him and wonders. 
He rides through the purple smoke to visit the 

sennin, 
He takes " Floating Hill " * by the sleeve, 
He claps his hand on the back of the great water 

sennin. 

But you, you dam'd crowd of gnats. 
Can you even tell the age of a turtle? 



A BALLAD OF THE MULBERRY 
ROAD 

(Fenollosa MSS., 'very early ) 

The sun rises in south east corner of things 
To look on the tall house of the Shin 
For they have a daughter named Rafu, 

(pretty girl) 
She made the name for herself: " Gauze Veil," 
For she feeds mulberries to silkworms. 

She gets them by the south wall of the 
town, 

* Name of a sennin. 

91 



with green strings she makes the warp of her 

basket, 
She makes the shoulder-straps of her basket 

from the boughs of Katsura, 
And she piles her hair up on the left side of her 

head-piece. 



Her earrings are made of pearl, 
Her underskirt is of green pattern-silk. 
Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple. 
And when men going by look on Rafu 
They set down their burdens. 
They stand and twirl their moustaches. 



OLD IDEA OF CHOAN BY ROSORIU 



The narrow streets cut into the wide highway at 

Choan, 
Dark oxen, white horses, 

drag on the seven coaches with outriders. 
The coaches are perfumed wood, 
The jewelled chair is held up at the crossway, 



92 



Before the royal lodge 

a glitter of golden saddles, awaiting the 
princess, 
They eddy before the gate of the barons. 
The canopy embroidered with dragons 

drinks in and casts back the sun. 

Evening comes. 

The trappings are bordered with mist. 
The hundred cords of mist are spread through 

and double the trees, 
Night birds, and night women, 

spread out their sounds through the 
gardens. 



II 

Birds with flowery wing, hovering butterflies 
crowd over the thousand gates, 

Trees that glitter like jade, 

terraces tinged with silver. 

The seed of a myriad hues, 

A net-work of arbours and passages and covered 
ways. 

Double towers, winged roofs, 

border the net-work of ways: 



93 



A place of felicitous meeting. 
Rill's house stands out on the sky, 

with glitter of colour 
As Butei of Kan had made the high golden lotus 

to gather his dews, 
Before it another house which I do not know: 
I low shall we know all the friends 

whom we meet on strange roadways? 



TO-EM-MEFS "THE UNMOVING 
CLOUD" 

"Wet springtime," says To-em-mei, 

" Wet spring in the garden." 

I 

The clouds have gathered, and gathered, 
and the rain falls and falls. 

The eight ply of the heavens 

are all folded into one darkness. 

And the wide, flat road stretches out. 

I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet, 

1 pat my new cask of wine. 

My friends are estranged, or far distant, 

I bow my head and stand still. 



94 



II 

Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered. 
The eight ply of the heavens are darkness, 
The flat land is turned into river. 

" Wine, wine, here is wine 1 " 
I drink by my eastern window. 
I think of talking and man, 
And no boat, no carriage, approaches. 

Ill 

The trees in my east-looking garden 

are bursting out with new twigs, 
They try to stir new affection, 

And men say the sun and moon keep on moving 
because they can't find a soft seat. 

The birds flutter to rest in my tree, 

and I think I have heard them saying, 
" It is not that there are no other men 
But we like this fellow the best. 
But however we long to speak 
He can not know of our sorrow." 



END OF CATHAY 
95 



T'ao Yuan Ming 
A.D. 365-427 



NEAR PERIGORD 

// Perigord, pres del muralli 

Tan que i puoscli' om gitar ab malh 

You'd have men's hearts up from the dust 

And tell their secrets, Messire Cino, 

Right enough? Then read between the lines 

of Uc St. CIrc, 
Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale. 

Bertrans, En Bertrans, left a fine canzone: 
" Maent, I love you, you have turned me out. 
The voice at Montfort, Lady Agnes' hair, 
Bel Miral's stature, the viscountess' throat, 
Set all together, are not worthy of you. . . ." 
And all the while you sing out that canzone, 
Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac, 
One at Chalais, another at Malemort 
Hard over Brive — for every lady a castle, 
T'ach place strong. 

Oh, is it easy enough? 
Tairiran held hall in Montaignac, 
His brother-in-law was all there was of power 
In Perigord, and this good union 
Gobbled all the land, and held it later 

for some hundred years. 



96 



And our En Bertrans was in Altafort, 

Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife, 

As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell — 

The headless trunk " that made its head a lamp." 

For separation wrought out separation. 

And he who set the strife between brother and 

brother 
And had his way with the old English king, 
Viced in such torture for the " counterpass." 

How would you live, with neighbours set about 

you — 
Poictiers and Brive, untaken Rochechouart, 
Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand; 
And you on that great mountain of a palm — 
Not a neat ledge, not Foix between its streams, 
But one huge back half-covered up with pine, 
Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of 

Born — 
The four round towers, four brothers — mostly 

fools: 
What could he do but play the desperate chess. 
And stir old grudges? 

" Pawn your castles, lords! 
Let the Jews pay." 

And the great scene — 



97 



(That, maybe, never happened!) 

Beaten at last. 
Before the hard old king: 

" Your son, ah, since he died 
My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside 
In the full flare of grief. Do what you will." 

Take the whole man, and ravel out the story. 
He loved this lady in castle Montaignac? 
The castle flanked him — he had need of it. 
You read to-day, how long the overlords of 

Perigord, 
The Talleyrands, have held the place, it was no 

transient fiction. 
And Maent failed him? Or saw through the 

scheme? 

And all his net-like thought of new alliance? 
Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars. 
Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips 
Where the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies. 
And Rochecouart can match it, stronger yet. 
The very spur's end, built on sheerest cliff, 
And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive, 
While Born, his own close purse, his rabbit warren, 
His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors. 



98 



A-bristle with antennae to feel roads, 

To sniff the traffic into Perigord. 

And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line, 

The ten good miles from thence to Maent's castle, 

All of his flank — how could he do without her? 

And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse? 

What would he do without her? 

" Papiol, 
Go forthright singing — Anhes, Cembelins. 
There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands; 
There is a trellis full of early roses, 
And all my heart is bound about with love. 
Where am I come with compound flatteries — 
What doors are open to fine compliment? " 
And every one half jealous of Maent? 
He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies 
Against her, give her pride in them? 

Take his own speech, make what you will of it — 
And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent? 

Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war? 
Is it an intrigue to run subtly out, 
Born of a jongleur's tongue, freely to pass 
Up and about and in and out the land. 



99 



Mark him a craftsman and a strategist? 
(St. Leider had done as much as Polhonac, 
Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.) 
Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition. 
To sing one thing when your song means another, 
" Et alh'trar ab lor bordon — " 

Foix' count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans' 
singing? 

Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent, 

Or war and broken heaumes and politics? 



II 

End fact. Try fiction, Let us say we see 
En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort, 
Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light, 
South toward Montaignac, and he bends at a 

table 
Scribbling, swearing between his teeth; by his left 

hand 
Lie little strips of parchment covered over, 
Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos. 
Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious? 
With a red straggling beard? 
And the green cat's-eye lifts toward Montaignac. 



lOO 



Or take his " magnet " singer setting out, 
Dodging his way past Aubeterre, singing at 

Chalais 

In the vaulted hall, 
Or, by a lichened tree at Rochecouart 
Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys. 
Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening. 
Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and 

soul . . . 
To find her half alone, Montfort away, 
And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her. 
Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one. 
Little enough? 
Or carry him forward. " Go through all the 

courts. 
My Magnet," Bertrand had said. 

We came to Ventadour 
In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon. 
No one hears save Arrimon Luc D'Esparo — 
No one hears aught save the gracious sound of 

compliments. 
Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort, 
Rochecouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic, 
Malemort, guesses beneath, sends word to Coeur- 

de-Lion : 



lOI 



The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled 

About his castle, cattle driven out ! 

Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered? 

And ten years after, or twenty, as you will, 
Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus: 
The dull round towers encroaching on the field, 
The tents tight drawn, horses at tether 
Further and out of reach, the purple night. 
The crackling of small fires, the bannerets, 
The lazy leopards on the largest banner. 
Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armourer's torch- 
flare 
Melting on steel. 

And in the quietest space 
They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead; 
And we've the gossip (skipped six hundred years). 
Richard shall die to-morrow — leave him there 
Talking of trobar clus with Daniel. 
And the " best craftsman " sings out his friend's 

song. 
Envies its vigour . . . and deplores the technique. 
Dispraises his own skill? — That's as you will. 
And they discuss the dead man, 
Plantagenet puts the riddle: " Did he love her? " 



102 



And Arnaut parries: " Did he love your sister? 
True, he has praised her, but In some opinion 
He wrote that praise only to show he had 
The favour of your party; had been well received." 

" You knew the man." 

" You knew the man." 
" I am an artist, you have tried both metiers." 
" You were born near him." 

" Do we know our friends? " 
" Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved 

Maentl" 
*' Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle? " 

End the discussion, Richard goes out next day 
And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard, 
Pardons the bowman, dies, 

Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends 
" In sacred odour " — (that's apocryphal!) 
And we can leave the talk till Dante writes : 
Surely I saw, and still before my eyes 
Goes on that headless trunk, that hears for light 
Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair. 
And like a swinging lamp that says, " Ah me! 



103 



/ severed men, my head and heart 

Ye see here severed, my life's counterpart. 

Or take En Bertrans? 



Ill 

Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due 

Inferno, XXVIII, 125 

" Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere 
Poppies and day's-eyes in the green email 
Rose over us; and we knew all that stream, 
And our two horses had traced out the valleys; 
Knew the low flooded lands squared out with 

poplars, 
In the young days when the deep sky befriended. 
And great wings beat above us in the twilight, 
And the great wheels in heaven 
Bore us together . . . surging . . . and apart . . . 
Believing we should meet with lips and hands. 

High, high and sure . . . and then the counter- 
thrust: 
' Why do you love me ? Will you always love me ? 
But I am like the grass, I can not love you.' 



104 



Or, ' Love, and I love and love you, 
And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your 
hands.' 

So to this last estrangement, Tairiran 1 

There shut up in his castle, Tairiran's, 
She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her 

hands. 
Gone — ah, gone — untouched, unreachable I 
She who could never live save through one person, 
She who could never speak save to one person, 
And all the rest of her a shifting change, 
A broken bundle of mirrors ... 1 " 

VILLANELLE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL 
HOUR 

I had over-prepared the event, 

that much was ominous. 
With middle-ageing care 

I had laid out just the right books. 
I had almost turned down the pages. 

Beauty is so rare a thing. 
So few drink of my fountain. 



los 



So much barren regret, 

So many hours wasted! 

And now I watch, from the window, 

the rain, the wandering busses. 

" Their httle cosmos is shaken " — 

the air is alive with that fact. 
In their parts of the city 

they are played on by diverse forces. 
How do I know? 

Oh, I know well enough. 
For them there is something afoot. 

As for me: 
I had over-prepared the event — 

Beauty is so rare a thing. 
So few drink of my fountain. 

Two friends: a breath of the forest . . . 
Friends? Are people less friends 

because one has just, at last, found them? 
Twice they promised to come. 

" Between the night and morning? " 

Beauty would drink of my mind. 
Youth would awhile forget 

my youth is gone from me. 



1 06 



II 

(" Speak up! You have danced so stiffly? 
Someone admired your works, 
And said so frankly. 

" Did you talk like a fool, 

The first night? 

The second evening? " 

"But they promised again: 

' To-morrow at tea-time.' ") 

III 

Now the third day is here — 

no word from either; 
No word from her nor him, 
Only another man's note : 

" Dear Pound, I am leaving England." 

DANS UN OMNIBUS DE LONDRES 

Les yeux d'une morte aimee 

M'ont salue, 

Enchasses dans un visage stupide 

Dont tous les autres traits etaient banals, 

lis m'ont salue 



107 



Et alors je vis bien des choses 
Au dedans de ma memoire 
Remuer, 
S'eveiller. 

Je vis des canards sur le bord d'un lac minuscule, 
Aupres d'un petit enfant gai, bossu. 

Je vis les colonnes anciennes en " toe " 

Du Pare Monceau, 

Et deux petites filles graciles, 

Des patriciennes, 

aux toisons couleur de lin, 
Et des pigeonnes 
Grasses 

comme des poulardes. 
Je vis le pare, 
Et tous les gazons divers 
Ou nous avions loue des chaises 
Pour quatre sous. 

Je vis les cygnes noirs, 

Japonais, 

Leurs ailes 

Teintees de couleur sang de-dragon, 



io8 



Et toutes les fleurs 
D'Armenonville. 

Les yeux d'une morte 
M'ont salue. 



PAGANI'S, NOVEMBER 8 

Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very 
beautiful 

Normande cocotte 

The eyes of the very learned British Museum as- 
sistant. 



TO A FRIEND WRITING ON 
CABARET DANCERS 

" Breathe not the ivord to-morrow in her ears " 
Vir Quidem, on Dancers 

Good " Hedgethorn," for we'll anglicize your name 
Until the last slut's hanged and the last pig disem- 
boweled, 
Seeing your wife is charming and your child 
Sings in the open meadow — at least the kodak says 
so — 



109 



My good fellow, you, on a cabaret silence 
And the dancers, you write a sonnet; 
Say " Forget To-morrow," being of all men 
The most prudent, orderly, and decorous! 

" Pepita " has no to-morrow, so you write. 

Pepita has such to-morrows : with the hands puffed 

out, 
The pug-dog's features encrusted with tallow 
Sunk in a frowsy collar — an unbrushed black. 
She will not bathe too often, but her jewels 
Will be a stuffy, opulent sort of fungus 
Spread on both hands and on the up-pushed 

bosom — 
It juts like a shelf between the jowl and corset. 

Have you, or I, seen most of cabarets, good 
Hedgethorn ? 

Here's Pepita, tall and slim as an Egyptian 

mummy, 
Marsh-cranberries, the ribbed and angular pods 
Flare up with scarlet orange on stiff stalks 
And so Pepita 

flares on the crowded stage before our 
tables 



no 



Or slithers about between the dishonest waiters — 

" Carmen est maigre, unt trait de bistre 
Cerne son ceil de gitana " 

And " rend la flamme " 

you know the deathless verses. 
I search the features, the avaricious features 
Pulled by the kohl and rouge out of resemblance — 
Six pence the object for a change of passion. 

" Write me a poem." 

Come now, my dear Pepita, 
'* -ita, bonita, chiquita," 

that's what you mean you advertising 
spade, 
Or take the intaglio, my fat great-uncle's heir- 
loom: 
Cupid, astride a phallus with two wings. 
Swinging a cat-o'-nine-tails. 

No. Pepita, 
I have seen through the crust. 

I don't know what you look like 
But your smile pulls one way 

and your painted grin another, 
While that cropped fool, 

that tom-boy who can't earn her living, 



III 



Come, come to-morrow, 

To-morrow in ten years at the latest. 
She will be drunk In the ditch, but you, Pepita, 
Will be quite rich, quite plump, with pug-bitch 

features. 
With a black tint staining your cuticle, 
Prudent and svelte Pepita. 

" Poete, writ me a poeme ! " 
Spanish and Paris, love of the arts part of your 

geisha-culture ! 



Euhenia, in short skirts, slaps her wide stomach, 
Pulls up a roll of fat for the pianist, 
" Pauvre femme malgre ! " she says. 
He sucks his chop bone, 
That some one else has paid for, 

grins up an amiable grin. 
Explains the decorations. 

Good Hedgethorn, they all have futures, 
All these people. 

Old Popkoff 
Will dine next week with Mrs. Basil, 
Will meet a duchess and an ex-diplomat's widow 
From Weehawken — who has never known 
Any but " Majesties " and Italian nobles. 



112 



Euhenia will have a fonda in Orbajosa. 

The amorous nerves will give way to digestive; 

" Delight thy soul in fatness," saith the preacher. 

We can't preserve the elusive " mica salts," 

It may last well in these dark, northern climates, 

Nell Gwynn's still here, despite the reformation, 

And Edward's mistresses still light the stage, 

A glamour of classic youth in their deportment. 

The prudent whore is not without her future. 

Her bourgeois dulness is deferred. 



Her present dulness . . 
Oh well, her present dulness . . . 



Now in Venice, 'Storante al Giardino, I went early. 

Saw the performers come : him, her, the baby, 

A quiet and respectable-tawdry trio; 

An hour later : a show of calves and spangles, 



'' Un e duo fanno tre" 

Night after night, 
► No change, no change of program, " Che! 

La donna e mobile" 



113 



HOMAGE TO QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS 
FLORENTIS CHRISTIANUS 

(Ex libris Graec<e) 
I 

Theodorus will be pleased at my death, 

And someone else will be pleased at the death of 

Theodorus, 
And yet everyone speaks evil of death. 

II 

This place is the Cyprian's, for she has ever the 

fancy 
To be looking out across the bright sea. 
Therefore the sailors are cheered, and the waves 
Keep small with reverence, beholding her image. 

Anyte 

III 

A sad and great evil is the expectation of death — 
And there are also the inane expenses of the 

funeral; 
Let us therefore cease from pitying the dead 
For after death there comes no other calamity. 

Palladas 



114 



IV 

Troy 

Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded 

shrines. 
And your barbecues of great oxen. 
And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt 

clothes, 
With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes? 
Where is the work of your home-born sculptors? 

Time's tooth is into the lot, and war's and fate's 

too. 
Envy has taken your all, 
Save your douth and your story. 

Agathas Scholasticus 



V 

Woman? Oh, woman is a consummate rage, 

but dead, or asleep, she pleases. 
Take her. She has two excellent seasons. 

Palladas 



115 



VI 

Nicharcus upon Phidon his doctor 

Phldon neither purged me, nor touched me, 
But I remembered the name of his fever medicine 

and died. 



FISH AND THE SHADOW 

The salmon-trout drifts in the stream, 
The soul of the salmon-trout floats over the stream 
Like a little wafer of light. 

The salmon moves in the sun-shot, bright shallow 
sea. . . . 

As light as the shadow of the fish 

that falls through the water, 
She came into the large room by the stair, 
Yawning a little she came with the sleep still upon 
her. 

" I am just from bed. The sleep is still in my 

eyes. 
" Come. I have had a long dream." 



ii6 



And I: "That wood? 

And two springs have passed us." 

" Not so far, no, not so far now. 

There is a place — but no one else knows it 

A field in a valley . . . 



Qu'ieu siii avinen, 



leu lo sat. 



She must speak, of the time 

Of Arnaut de Mareuil, I thought, " qu'ieu sui 
avinen." 

Light as the shadow of the fish 

That falls through the pale green water. 



IMPRESSIONS OF FRANgOIS-MARIE 
AROUET (DE VOLTAIRE) 

I 

Phyllidula and the Spoils of Gouvernet 

Where, Lady, are the days 
When you could go out in a hired hansom 
Without footmen and equipments? 
And dine in a soggy, cheap restaurant? 



117 



Phyllitlula now, with your powdered Swiss footman 
Clanking ihc door shut, 

and lying; 
And carpets from Savonnier, and from Persia, 
And your new service at dinner. 
And phites from Germain, 
And cabinets and chests from Martin (almost lac- 

(|uer). 
And yoiir white vases from Japan, 
And the lustre of diamonds, 
litcetcra, etcetera, and etcetera? 



II 

To Madame du Chdlelet 

if you'd have me go on loving you 
(Jive me back the time of the thing. 

Will you give me dawn light at evening? 
Time has driven me out of the line plaisaunces, 
'\\\c parks with the swards all over dew, 
And grass going glassy with the light on it, 
I'he green stretches where love is and the grapes 
I lang in yellow-white and dark clusters ready for 
pressing. 

ii8 



And if now wc can't fit with our time of life 
There is not nuich hut its evil left us. 

Life gives us two minutes, two seasons — 

One to be dull in ; 
Two deaths — and to stop loving and being lovable, 
That is the real death, 
The other is little beside it. 

Crying after the follies gone by me. 

Quiet talking Is all that is left us — 

(lentle talking, not like the first talking, less lively; 

And to follow after friendship, as they call it, 

Weeping that we can follow naught else. 



Ill 

To Madame Lnllin 

You'll wonder that an old man of eighty 
Can go on writing you verses. . . . 

Grass showing under the snow. 
Birds singing late In the year! 



119 



And Tibullus could say of his death, in his Latin; 
" Delia, I would look on you, dying." 

And Delia herself fading out, 
Forgetting even her beauty. 



END OF LUSTRA 



120 



POEMS PUBLISHED BEFORE 191 1 



IN DURANCE 

I am homesick after mine own kind, 

Oh, I know that there are folk about me, friendly 

faces. 
But I am homesick after mine own kind. 

" These sell our pictures ! " Oh well, 

They reach me not, touch me some edge or that, 

But reach me not and all my life's become 

One flame, that reaches not beyond 

Mine heart's own hearth, 

Or hides among the ashes there for thee. 

•' Thee "? Oh " thee " is who cometh first 

Out of mine own soul-kin. 

For I am homesick after mine own kind 

And ordinary people touch me not. 

Yea, I am homesick 
After mine own kind that know, and feel 
And have some breath for beauty and the arts. 

Aye, I am wistful for my kin of the spirit 
And have none about me save in the shadows 
When come they, surging of power, " d^mon," 



123 



" Quasi KALOUN," S. T. says, Beauty is most that, 

a " calling to the soul." 
Well then, so call they; the swirlers out of the mist 

of my soul. 
They that come mewards bearing old magic. 

But for all that, I am homesick after mine own kind 

And would meet kindred even as I am, 

Flesh-shrouded bearing the secret. 

" All they that with strange sadness " 

Have the earth in mock'ry, and are kind to all. 

My fellows, aye I know the glory 

Of th' unbounded ones, but ye, that hide 

As I hide most the while 

And burst forth to the windows only whiles or whiles 

For love, or hope, or beauty or for power. 

Then smoulder, with the lids half closed 

And are untouched by the echoes of the world. 

Oh ye, my fellows : with the seas between us some be, 

Purple and sapphire for the silver shafts 

Of sun and spray all shattered at the bows, 

And some the hills hold off, 

The little hills to east us, though here we 

Have damp and plain to be our shutting in. 



124 



And yet my soul sings " Up I " and we are one. 
Yea thou, and Thou, and thou, and all my kin 
To whom my breast and arms are ever warm, 
For that I love ye as the wind the trees 
That holds their blossoms and their leaves in cure 
And calls the utmost singing from the boughs 
That 'thout him, save the aspen, were as dumb 
Still shade, and bade no whisper speak the birds of 

how 
" Beyond, beyond, beyond, there lies . . ." 



PIERE VIDAL OLD 

It is of Piere Vidal, the fool par excellence of all Provence, of 
whom the tale tells how he ran mad, as a wolf, because of his love 
for Loba of Pcnautier, and how men hunted him with dogs through 
the mountains of Cabaret and brought him for dead to the dwelling 
of this Loba (she-wolf) of Penautier, and how she and her Lord 
had him healed and made welcome, and he stayed some time at 
that court. He speaks: 

When I but think upon the great dead days 

And turn my mind upon that splendid madness, 

Lo 1 I do curse my strength 

And blame the sun his gladness; 

For that the one is dead 

And the red sun mocks my sadness. 



125 



Behold me, Vidal, that was fool of fools ! 

Swift as the king wolf was I and as strong 

When tall stags fled me through the alder brakes, 

And every jongleur knew me in his song, 

And the hounds fled and the deer fled 

And none fled over long. 

Even the grey pack knew me and knew fear. 
God! how the swiftest hind's blood spurted hot 
Over the sharpened teeth and purpling lips ! 
Hot was that hind's blood yet it scorched me not 
As did first scorn, then lips of the Penautier! 
Aye ye are fools, if ye think time can blot 

From Piere Vidal's remembrance that blue night. 

God ! but the purple of the sky was deep ! 

Clear, deep, translucent, so the stars me seemed 

Set deep in crystal; and because my sleep 

— Rare visitor — came not, — the Saints I guerdon 

For that restlessness — Piere set to keep 

One more fool's vigil with the hollyhocks. 

Swift came the Loba, as a branch that's caught, 

Torn, green and silent in the swollen Rhone, 

Green was her mantle, close, and wrought 

Of some thin silk stuff that's scarce stuff at all. 

But like a mist wherethrough her white form fought. 



126 



And conquered! Ah God! conquered! 
Silent my mate came as the night was still. 
Speech? Words? Faugh! Who talks of words 

and love? ! 
Hot is such love and silent, 
Silent as fate is, and as strong until 
It faints in taking and in giving all. 

Stark, keen, triumphant, till it plays at death. 
God ! she was white then, splendid as some tomb 
High wrought of marble, and the panting breath 
Ceased utterly. Well, then I waited, drew. 
Half-sheathed, then naked from its saffron sheath 
Drew full this dagger that doth tremble here. 

Just then she woke and mocked the less keen blade. 
Ah God, the Loba ! and my only mate ! 
Was there such flesh made ever and unmade! 
God curse the years that turn such women grey! 
Behold here Vidal, that was hunted, flayed. 
Shamed and yet bowed not and that won at last. 

And yet I curse the sun for his red gladness, 
I that have known strath, garth, brake, dale. 
And every run-way of the wood through the great 
madness, 



127 



Behold me shrivelled as an old oak's trunk 
And made men's mock'ry in my rotten sadness! 

No man hath heard the glory of my days : 
No man hath dared and won his dare as I: 
One night, one body and one welding flame! 
What do ye own, ye niggards 1 that can buy 
Such glory of the earth? Or who will win 
Such battle-guerdon with his " prowesse high"? 

O Age gone lax! O stunted followers. 
That mask at passions and desire desires, 
Behold me shrivelled, and your mock of mocks; 
And yet I mock you by the mighty fires 
That burnt me to this ash. 



Ah! Cabaret! Ah Cabaret, thy hills again! 



Take your hands off me ! . . . (Sniffing the air) 

Ha ! this scent is hot. 



128 



CANZONI 

First Published 191 i 

PRAYER FOR HIS LADY'S LIFE 

From Propertius, Elegiae, lib. Ill, 26 

Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm, 
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness. 
So many thousand beauties are gone down to 

Avernus 
Ye might let one remain above with us. 

With you is lope, with you the white-gleaming Tyro, 
With you is Europa and the shameless Pasiphae, 
And all the fair from Troy and all from Achaia, 
From the sundered realms, of Thebes and of aged 

Priamus; 
And all the maidens of Rome, as many as they were, 
They died, and the greed of your flame consumes 

them. 

Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm, 
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness. 
So many thousand fair are gone down to Avernus, 
Ye might let one remain above with us. 



129 



/ 



" BLANDULA, TENULLA, VAGULA " 

What hast thou, O my soul, with paradise? 

Will we not rather, when our freedom's won, 

Get us to some clear place wherein the sun 

Lets drift in on us through the olive leaves 

A liquid glory? If at Sirmio, 

My soul, I meet thee when this life's outrun, 

Will we not find some headland consecrated 

By aery apostles of terrene delight, 

Will not our cult be founded on the waves, 

Clear sapphire, cobalt, cyanine. 

On triune azures, the impalpable 

Mirrors unstill of the eternal change? 

Soul, if She meet us there, will any rumour 
Of havens more high and courts desirable 
Lure us beyond the cloudy peak of Riva? 



ERAT HQRA 

" Thank you, whatever comes." And then she 

turned 
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers 
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside, 
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes 



130 



One hour was sunlit and the most high gods 
May not make boast of any better thing 
Than to have watched that hour as It passed. 



. THE SEA OF GLASS 

r 

I looked and saw a sea 

roofed over with rainbows, 
In the midst of each 

two lovers met and departed; 
Then the sky was full of faces 

with gold glories behind them. 



ROME 

From the French of Joachim du Bellay 
" Troica Roma resurges." 

Propertius 

O thou new comer who seek'st Rome in Rome 
And fmd'st in Rome no thing thou canst call Roman; 
Arches worn old and palaces made common, 
Rome's name alone within these walls keeps home. 

Behold how pride and ruin can befall 

One who hath set the whole world 'neath her laws, 



131 



All-conquering, now conquered, because 
She Is Time's prey and Time consumeth all. 

Rome that are Rome's one sole last monument, 
Rome that alone hast conquered Rome the town, 
Tiber alone, transient and seaward bent, 
Remains of Rome. O world, thou uncon- 

stant mime ! 
That which stands firm in thee Time batters down. 
And that which fleeteth doth outrun swift time. 



HER MONUMENT, THE IMAGE 
CUT THEREON 

From the Italian of Leopardi 

. (Written 1831-3 circa) 

V 

Such wast thou, 

Who art now 

But buried dust and rusted skeleton. 

Above the bones and mire. 

Motionless, placed in vain. 

Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years. 

Sole guard of grief 

Sole guard of memory 

Standeth this image of the beauty sped. 



132 



O glance, when thou wast still as thou art now, 

How hast thou set the fire 

A-tremble in men's veins; O lip curved high 

To mind me of some urn of full delight, 

O throat girt round of old with swift desire, 

O palms of Love, that in your wonted ways 

Not once but many a day 

Felt hands turn ice a-sudden, touching ye. 

That ye were once ! of all the grace ye had 

That which remaineth now 

Shameful, most sad 

Finds 'neath this rock fit mould, fit resting place ! 

And still when fate recalleth, 

Even that semblance that appears amongst us 

Is like to heaven's most 'live imagining. 

All, all our life's eternal mystery! 

To-day, on high 

Mounts, from our mighty thoughts and from the 

fount 
Of sense untellable. Beauty 
That seems to be some quivering splendour cast 
By the immortal nature on this quicksand, 
And by surhuman fates 
Given to mortal state 
To be a sign and an hope made secure 



133 



Of blissful kingdoms and the aureate spheres; 

And on the morrow, by some lightsome twist, 

Shameful In sight, abject, abominable 

All this angelic aspect can return 

And be but what it was 

\Vith all the admirable concepts that moved from it 

Swept from the mind with it in Its departure. 

Infinite things desired, lofty visions 

'Got on desirous thought by natural virtue, 

And the wise concord, whence through delicious seas 

The arcane spirit of the whole Mankind 

Turns hardy pilot . . . and if one wrong note 

Strike the tympanum. 

Instantly 

That paradise is hurled to nothingness. 

O mortal nature, 

If thou art 

Frail and so vile in all. 

How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense; 

Yet if thou art 

Noble in any part 

How is the noblest of thy speech and thought 

So lightly wrought 

Or to such base occasion lit and quenched? 



134 



HOUSMAN'S MESSAGE TO 
MANKIND 

O woe, woe, 

People are born and die. 
We also shall be dead pretty soon. 
Therefore let us act as if we were 
dead already. 

The bird sits on the hawthorn tree 
But he dies also, presently. 
Some lads get hung, and some get shot. 
Woeful is this human lot. 

IV oe! woe, etcetera. . . . 

London is a woeful place, 
Shropshire is much pleasanter. 
Then let us smile a little space 
Upon fond nature's morbid grace. 

Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera. . 

TRANSLATIONS FROM HEINE 

VON DIE HEIMKEHR 
I 

Is your hate, then, of such measure? 
Do you, truly, so detest me? 

135 



Through all the world will I complain 
Oh how you have addressed me. 

O ye lips that are ungrateful, 
Hath it never once distressed you, 
That you can say such awful things 
Of any one who ever kissed you? 

II 

So thou hast forgotten fully 

That I so long held thy heart wholly, 

Thy little heart, so sweet and false and small 

That there's no thing more sweet or false at all. 

Love and lay thou hast forgotten fully. 

And my heart worked at them unduly. 

I know not if the love or if the lay were better stuff, 

But I know now, they both were good enough. 

Ill 

Tell me where thy lovely love is, 
Whom thou once did sing so sweetly. 
When the fairy flames enshrouded 
Thee, and held thy heart completely. 

136 



All the flames are dead and sped now 
And my heart is cold and sere; 
Behold this book, the urn of ashes, 
'Tis my true love's sepulchre. 

IV 

I dreamt that I was God Himself 
Whom heavenly joy immerses, 
And all the angels sat about 
And praised my verses. 



The mutilated choir boys 
When I begin to sing 
Complain about the awful noise 
And call my voice too thick a thing. 

When light their voices lift them up. 
Bright notes against the ear, 
Through trills and runs like crystal. 
Ring delicate and clear. 

They sing of Love that's grown desirous. 
Of Love, and joy that is Love's inmost part. 
And all the ladies swim through tears 
Toward such a work of art. 



137 



VT 

This delightful young man 
Should not lack for honourers, 
I Ic propitiates me with oysters, 
With Rhine wine and liqueurs. 

i low his coat and pants adorn him! 
Yet his ties are more adorning, 
In these he daily comes to ask me : 
" Are you feeling well this morning? " 

I le speaks of my extended fame. 
My wit, charm, definitions. 
And is diligent to serve me, 
Is detailed in his provisions. 

In evening company he sets his face 
In most spiritu£?/ positions. 
And declaims before the ladies 
My (jod-Iikc compositions. 

O what comfort it is for me 
To (ind him such, when the days bring 
No comfort, at my time of life when 
All good things go vanishing. 

138 



TRANSL/ITOR TO TKA NSI./ITIID 

Harry Heine (ursrs he, 

1 H<ve ton late to ju/> ivitlt thee! 

IVho can demolish at surh polished ease 
P/iilistia's pomp and Art's pomposities! 



VII 

SONG FROM dip: IIARZRKISR 

I am the Princess Ilz.a 
In llscnstcin T fare, 
Come with me to that castle 
And we'll be happy there. 

Thy head will 1 cover over 
With my waves' clarity 
Till thou forget thy sorrow, 
() wounded sorrowfully. 

Thou wilt in my white arms there, 
Nay, on my breast thou must 
Forget and rest and dream there 
For thine old legend-lust. 

My lips and my heart are thine there 
As they were his and mine. 
1 lis ? Why the good King I larry's, 
And he is dead lang syne. 

'39 



Dead men stay alway dead men, 
Life is the live man's part, 
And I am fair and golden 
With joy breathless at heart. 

If my heart stay below there, 
My crystal halls ring clear 
To the dance of lords and ladies 
In all their splendid gear. 

The silken trains go rustling. 
The spur-clinks sound between. 
The dark dwarfs blow and bow there 
Small horn and violin. 

Yet shall my white arms hold thee, 
That bound King Harry about. 
Ah, I covered his ears with them 
When the trumpet rang out. 



VIII 

And have you thoroughly kissed my lips? 

There was no particular waste. 
And are you not ready when evening's come? 

There's no particular haste. 



140 



You've got the whole night before you, 

Heart's-all-beloved-my-own, 
In an uninterrupted night one can 

Get a good deal of kissing done. 

UND DRANG 

Nay, dwells he in cloudy rumour alone? 

BiNYON 

I 

I am worn faint, 

The winds of good and evil 

Blind me with dust 

And burn me with the cold, 

There is no comfort being over-man; 

Yet are we come more near 

The great oblivions and the labouring night, 

Inchoate truth and the sepulchral forces. 

II 

Confusion, clamour, 'mid the many voices 
Is there a meaning, a significance? 

That life apart from all life gives and takes. 
This life, apart from all life's bitter and life's sweet, 
Is good. 



141 



Ye see me and ye say: exceeding sweet 
Life's gifts, his youth, his art. 
And his too soon acclaim. 

I also knew exceeding bitterness, 

Saw good things altered and old friends fare forth. 

And what I loved in me hath died too soon. 

Yea I have seen the " gray above the green "; 

Gay have I lived in life; 

Though life hath lain 
Strange hands upon me and hath torn my sides. 
Yet I believe. 



Life is most cruel where she is most wise. 

Ill 

The will to live goes from me. 

I have lain 
Dull and out-worn 

with some strange, subtle sickness. 
Who shall say 

That love is not the very root of this, 
O thou afar? 

Yet she was near me, 

that eternal deep. 



142 



O it is passing strange that love 
Can blow two ways across one soul. 



And I was Aengus for a thousand years, 
And she, the ever-living, moved with me 
And strove amid the waves, and 

would not go. 

IV 

ELEGIA 

" Far buon tempo e trionfare " 

" I have put my days and dreams out of mind," 
For all their hurry and their weary fret 
Availed me little. But another kind 
Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind, 
Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses 
Wind and unwind as vainly. 



I have lived long, and died, 

Yea I have been dead, right often, 

And have seen one thing: 

The sun, while he Is high, doth light our wrong 

And none can break the darkness with a song. 

To-day's the cup. To-morrow is not ours : 
Nay, by our strongest bands we bind her not, 



143 



Nor all our fears and our anxieties 
Turn her one leaf or hold her scimitar. 

The deed blots out the thought 

And many thoughts, the vision; 

And right's a compass with as many poles 

As there are points in her circumference, 

'Tis vain to seek to steer all courses even. 

And all things save sheer right are vain enough. 

The blade were vain to grow save toward the sun, 

And vain th' attempt to hold her green forever. 

All things in season and no thing o'er longl 
Love and desire and gain and good forgetting, 
Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long! 



How our modernity, 

Nerve-wracked and broken, turns 

Against time's way and all the way of things. 

Crying with weak and egoistic cries 1 



All things are given over. 
Only the restless will 
Surges amid the stars 



144 



Seeking new moods of life, 
New permutations. 



See, and the very sense of what we know 
Dodges and hides as in a sombre curtain 
Bright threads leap forth, and hide, and leave no 
pattern. 

VI 

I thought I had put Love by for a time 
And I was glad, for to me his fair face 
Is like Pain's face. 

A little light. 
The lowered curtain and the theatre! 
And o'er the frail talk of the inter-act 
Something that broke the jest! A little light, 
The gold, and half the profile ! 

The whole face 
Was nothing like you, yet that Image cut 
Sheer through the moment. 

VI^; 
I have gone seeking for you in the twilight, 
Here in the flurry of Fifth Avenue, 
Here where they pass between their teas and teas. 
Is it such madness? though you could not be 



145 



Ever in all that crowd, no gown 

Of all their subtle sorts could be your gown. 

Yet I am fed with faces, is there one 
That even in the half-light mindeth me. 



VII 

THE HOUSE OF SPLENDOUR 

'Tis Evanoe's, 

A house not made with hands, . 

But out somewhere beyond the worldly ways 

Her gold is spread, above, around, inwoven, 

Strange ways and walls are fashioned out of it. 

And I have seen my Lady in the sun. 

Her hair was spread about, a sheaf of wings, 

And red the sunlight was, behind it all. 

And I have seen her there within her house, 
With six great sapphires hung along the wall, 
Low, panel-shaped, a-level with her knees. 
And all her robe was woven of pale gold. 

There are there many rooms and all of gold, 
Of woven walls deep patterned, of email, 



146 



Of beaten work; and through the claret stone, 
Set to some weaving, comes the aureate light. 
Here am I come perforce my love of her. 
Behold mine adoration 

Maketh me clear, and there are powers in this 
Which, played on by the virtues of her soul. 
Break down the four-square walls of standing time. 



VIII 

THE FLAME 

'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating, 

Provence knew; 

'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses, 

Provenge knew. 

We who are wise beyond your dream of wisdom, 

Drink our immortal moments; we " pass through." 

We have gone forth beyond your bonds and borders, 

Provence knew; 

And all the tales they ever writ of Oisin 

Say but this : 

That man doth pass the net of days and hours. 

Where time is shrivelled down to time's seed corn 

We of the Ever-living, in that light 

Meet through our veils and whisper, and of love. 



147 



O smoke and shadow of a darkling world, 
Barters of passion, and that tenderness 
That's but a sort of cunning! O my Love, 
These, and the rest, and all the rest we knew. 

'TIs not a game that plays at mates and mating, 
'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses, 
'Tis not " of days and nights " and troubling years. 
Of cheeks grown sunken and glad hair gone gray; 
There is the subtler music, the clear light 
Where time burns back about th' eternal embers. 
We are not shut from all the thousand heavens: 
Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen, 
Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid. 
Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysoprase. 

Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee 
Nature herself's turned metaphysical. 
Who can look on that blue and not believe? 

Thou hooded opal, thou eternal pearl, 

O thou dark secret with a shimmering floor. 

Through all thy various mood I know thee mine; 

If I have merged my soul, or utterly 
Am solved and bound in, through aught here on 
earth, 



148 



There canst thou find me, O thou anxious thou, 
Who call'st about my gates for some lost me ; 
I say my soul flowed back, became translucent. 
Search not my lips, O Love, let go my hands, 
This thing that moves as man is no more mortal. 
If thou hast seen my shade sans character. 
If thou hast seen that mirror of all moments, 
That glass to all things that o'ershadow it. 
Call not that mirror me, for I have slipped 
Your grasp, I have eluded. 

IX 

(HOR.^ BEATiE INSCRIPTIO) 

How will this beauty, when I am far hence, 
Sweep back upon me and engulf my mind ! 

How will these hours, when we twain are gray, 
Turned in their sapphire tide, come flooding o'er us ! 

X 

(THE ALTAR) 

Let US build here an exquisite friendship. 
The flame, the autumn, and the green rose of love 
Fought out their strife here, 'tis a place of wonder; 
Where these have been, meet 'tis, the ground is holy. 



149 



IX 

(AU SALON) 

Her grave, sweet haughtiness 

Pleaseth me, and in like wise 

Her quiet ironies. 

Others are beautiful, none more, some less. 

I suppose, when poetry comes down to facts, 
When our souls are returned to the gods 

and the spheres they belong in, 
Here in the every-day where our acts 
Rise up and judge us; 

I suppose there are a few dozen veri ies 
That no shift of mood can shake from us: 



One place where we'd rather have tea 
(Thus far hath modernity brought us) 
"Tea" (Damn you!) 

Have tea, damn the Caesars, 
Talk of the latest success, give wing to some scandal, 
Garble a name we detest, and for prejudice? 
Set loose the whole consummate pack 

to bay like Sir Roger de Coverley's 
This our reward for our works, 

sic crescit gloria mundi : 
Some circle of not more than three 

that we prefer to play up to, 



150 



Some few whom we'd rather please 

than hear the whole aegrum vulgus 
Splitting its beery jowl 

a-meaowling our praises. 

Some certain peculiar things, 

cari laresque, penatcs, 
Some certain accustomed forms, 

the absolute unimportant. 



XII 

(AU JARDIN) 

you, away high there, 

you that lean 
From amber lattices upon the cobalt night, 

1 am below amid the pine trees. 
Amid the little pine trees, hear me! 

" The jester walked in the garden." 

Did he so? 
Well, there's no use your loving me 
That way. Lady; 
For I've nothing but songs to give you. 



151 



I am set wide upon the world's ways 
To say that life is, some way, a gay thing, 
But you never string two days upon one wire 
But there'll come sorrow of it. 

And I loved a love once, 
Over beyond the moon there, 

I loved a love once, 
And, may be, more times, 

But she danced like a pink moth in the shrubbery. 

Oh, I know you women from the " other folk," 
And it'll all come right, 
O' Sundays. 

" The jester walked in the garden." 

Did he so? 



RIPOSTES 

First Published 191 2 

When I behold how black, immortal ink 
Drips from my deathless pen — ah, well-away 
Why should we stop at all for what I think? 
There is enough in what I chance to say. 

152 



It is enough that we once came together; 
What is the use of setting it to rime? 
When it is autumn do we get spring weather, 
Or gather may of harsh northwindish time? 

It is enough that we once came together; 
What if the wind have turned against the rain? 
It is enough that we once came together; 
Time has seen this, and will not turn again; 

And who are we, who know that last intent, 
To plague tc morrow with a testament ! 



IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM 

On a certain one's departure 

" Time's bitter flood " I Oh, that's all very well, 
But where's the old friend hasn't fallen off. 
Or slacked his hand-grip when you first gripped 
fame? 

I know your circle and can fairly tell 

What you have kept and what you've left behind: 

I know my circle and I know very well 

How many faces I'd have out of mind. 



153 



APPARUIT 

Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw 
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a 
portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered, 
caught at the wonder. 

Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where 
thou afar moving in the glamorous sun 
drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue 
golden about thee. 

Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there, 
open lies the land, yet the steely going 
darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded aether 
parted before thee. 

Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, cast- 
ing a-loose the cloak of the body, earnest 
straight, then shone thine oriel and the stunned 
light faded about thee. 

Half the graven shoulder, the throat aflash with 
strands of light inwoven about it, loveli- 
est of all things, frail alabaster, ah me ! 
swift in departing. 



154 



Clothed in goldish weft, delicately perfect, 
gone as wind! The cloth of the magical hands! 
Thou a slight thing, thou in access of cunning 
dar'dst to assume this? 



THE TOMB AT AKR CAAR 

" I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched 

These five millennia, and thy dead eyes 

Moved not, nor ever answer my desire, 

And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame, 

Burn not with me nor any saffron thing. 

See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee, 
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues; 
But not thou me. 

I have read out the gold upon the wall. 

And wearied out my thought upon the signs. 

And there is no new thing in all this place. 

I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed, 
Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine. 
And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee. 



^SS 



thou unmindful ! How should I forget ! 
— Even the river many days ago, 

The river, thou wast over young, 
And three souls came upon Thee — 

And I came. 

And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off; 

1 have been intimate with thee, known thy ways. 
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips. 
Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels? 
How ' came I in ' ? Was I not thee and Thee? 

And no sun comes to rest me in this place, 
And I am torn against the jagged dark. 
And no light beats upon me, and you say 
No word, day after day. 

Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks 
And all their crafty work upon the door. 
Out through the glass-green fields. . . . 

Yet it is quiet here : 
I do not go." 



156 



PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME 

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, 
London has swept about you this score years 
And bright ships left you this or that in fee: 
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things. 
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of 

price. 
Great minds have sought you — lacking someone 

else. 
You have been second always. Tragical? 
No. You preferred it to the usual thing: 
One dull man, dulling and uxorious. 
One average mind — with one thought less, each 

year. 
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit 
Hours, where something might have floated up. 
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay. 
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you 
And takes strange gain away: 
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion; 
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two. 
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else 
That might prove useful and yet never proves, 
That never fits a corner or shows use. 
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days: 



157 



The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work; 
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays. 
These are your riches, your great store; and yet 
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things. 
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff 
In the slow float of differing light and deep. 
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all, 
Nothing that's quite your own. 
Yet this is you. 



NEW YORK 

My City, my beloved, my white ! 

Ah, slender, 

Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee 

a soul. 
Delicately upon the reed, attend me I 

Now do I know that I am mad, 

For here are a million people surly with traffic; 

This is no maid. 

Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one. 

My City, my beloved, 

Thou art a maid with no breasts, 



158 



Thou art slender as a silver reed. 
Listen to me, attend me ! 
And I will breathe into thee a soul, 
And thou shalt live for ever. 



A GIRL 

The tree has entered my hands. 

The sap has ascended my arms. 

The tree has grown in my breast — 

Downward, 

The branches grow out of me, Hke arms. 

Tree you are. 

Moss you are. 

You are violets with wind above them. 

A child — so high — you are. 

And all this is folly to the world. 



" PHASELLUS ILLE " 

This papier-mache, which you see, my friends, 
Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors. 
Its mind was made up in " the seventies," 
Nor hath it ever since changed that concoction. 



159 



It works to represent that school of thought 
Which brought the hair-cloth chair to such perfec- 
tion, 
Nor will the horrid threats of Bernard Shaw 
Shake up the stagnant pool of its convictions; 
Nay, should the " deathless voice of all the world " 
Speak once again for its sole stimulation, 
'Twould not move it one jot from left to right. 

Come Beauty barefoot from the Cyclades, 

She'd find a model for St. Anthony 

In this thing's sure decorum and behaviour. 



AN OBJECT 

This thing, that hath a code and not a core, 
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections, 
And nothing now 
Disturbeth his reflections. 



1 60 



QUIES 

This is another of our ancient loves. 

Pass and be silent, Rullus, for the day 

Hath lacked a something since this lady passed; 

Hath laclced a something. 'Twas but marginal. 



THE SEAFARER 

(From the early Anglo-Saxon text) 

May I for my own self song's truth reckon, 

Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days 

Hardship endured oft. 

Bitter breast-cares have I abided, 

Known on my keel many a care's hold, 

And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent 

Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head 

While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted, 

My feet were by frost benumbed. 

Chill its chains are; chafing sighs 

Hew my heart round and hunger begot 

Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not 

That he on dry land loveliest liveth. 

List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea, 

Weathered the winter, wretched outcast 

Deprived of my kinsmen; 



i6i 



Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hailscur flew, 
There I heard naught save the harsh sea 
And Ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries, 
Did for my games the gannet's clamour, 
Sea-fowls' loudness was for me l?ughter, 
The mews' singing all my mead-drink. 
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern 
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed 
With spray on his pinion. 

Not any protector 
May make merry man faring needy. 
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life 
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business, 
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft 
Must bide above brine. 
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north. 
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then, 
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now 
The heart's thought that I on high streams 
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone. 
Moaneth away my mind's lust 
That I fare forth, that I afar hence 
Seek out a foreign fastness. 

For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's 
midst, 



162 



Not though he be given his good, but will have in 

his youth greed; 
Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faith- 
ful 
But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare 
Whatever his lord will. 

He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having 
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight 
Nor any whit else save the wave's slash, 
Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the 

water. 
Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries. 
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker, 
All this admonisheth man eager of mood, 
The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks 
On flood-ways to be far departing. 
Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying. 
He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow. 
The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows not — 
He the prosperous man — what some perform 
Where wandering them widest draweth. 
So that but now my heart burst from my breast- 
lock. 
My mood 'mid the mere-flood. 
Over the whale's acre, would wander wide. 
On earth's shelter cometh oft to me, 



163 



Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer, 
Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly, 
O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow 
My lord deems to me this dead life 
On loan and on land, I believe not 
That any earth-weal eternal standeth 
Save there be somewhat calamitous 
That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain. 
Disease or oldness or sword-hate 
Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body. 
And for this, every earl whatever, for those speak- 
ing after — 
Laud of the living, boasteth some last word, 
That he will work ere he pass onward. 
Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice. 
Daring ado, . . . 

So that all men shall honour him after 
And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English, 
Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast, 
Delight mid the doughty. 

Days little durable, 
And all arrogance of earthen riches, 
There come now no kings nor Caesars 
Nor gold-giving lords like those gone. 
Howe'er in mirth most magnified, 
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest, 



164 



Drear all this excellence, delights undurable 1 

Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth. 

Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low. 

Earthly glory ageth and seareth. 

No man at all going the earth's gait, 

But age fares against him, his face paleth. 

Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions, 

Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven. 

Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth, 

Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry, 

Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart. 

And though he strew the grave with gold, 

His born brothers, their buried bodies 

Be an unlikely treasure hoard. 



THE CLOAK* 

Thou keep'st thy rose-leaf 
Till the rose-time will be over, 
Think'st thou that Death will kiss thee? 
Think'st thou that the Dark House 

Will find thee such a lover 
As I? Will the new roses miss thee? 



* Asclepiades, Julianus ^gyptus. 

165 



Prefer my cloak unto the cloak of dust 
'Neath which the last year lies, 

For thou shouldst more mistrust 
Time than my eyes. 



AN IMMORALITY 

Sing we for love and idleness, 
Naught else is worth the having. 

Though I have been in many a land, 
There is naught else in living. 

And I would rather have my sweet. 
Though rose-leaves die of grieving. 

Than do high deeds in Hungary 
To pass all men's believing. 



i66 



DIEU! QU'IL LA FAIT 

From Charles D'Orleans 
For music 

God! that mad'st her well regard her, 
How she is so fair and bonny; 
For the great charms that are upon her 
Ready are all folk to reward her. 

Who could part him from her borders 
When spells are alway renewed on her? 
God ! that mad'st her well regard her, 
How she is so fair and bonny. 

From here to there to the sea's border, 
Dame nor damsel there's not any 
Hath of perfect charms so many. 
Thoughts of her are of dream's order: 
God! that mad'st her well regard her. 



SALVE PONTIFEX 

(A. C. S.) 

One after one they leave thee, 

High Priest of lacchus. 

Intoning thy melodies as winds intone 

The whisperings of leaves on sunlit days. 

167 



And the sands are many 
And the seas beyond the sands are one 
In ultimate, so we here being many 
Are unity; nathless thy compeers, 

Knowing thy melody, 
Lulled with the wine of thy music 
Go seaward silently, leaving thee sentinel 
O'er all the mysteries, 

High Priest of lacchus. 
For the lines of life lie under thy fingers, 
And above the vari-coloured strands 
Thine eyes look out unto the infinitude 
Of the blue waves of heaven, 
And even as Triplex Sisterhood 
Thou fingerest the threads knowing neither 
Cause nor the ending, 

High Priest of lacchus, 
Draw'st forth a multiplicity 
Of strands, and, beholding 
The colour thereof, raisest thy voice 
Towards the sunset, 

O High Priest of lacchus! 
And out of the secrets of the inmost mysteries 
Thou chantest strange f ar-sourced canticles : 

O High Priest of lacchus! 
Life and the ways of Death her 



i68 



Twin-born sister, that is life's counterpart, 

And of night and the winds of night; 

Silent voices ministering to the souls 

Of hamadryads that hold council concealed 

In streams and tree-shadowing 

Forests on hill slopes, 

O High Priest of lacchus. 
All the manifold mystery 
Thou makest a wine of song, 
And maddest thy following even 
With visions of great deeds 
And their futility, 

O High Priest of lacchus! 
Though thy co-novices are bent to the scythe 
Of the magian wind that is voice of Persephone, 
Leaving thee solitary, master of Initiating 
Maenads that come through the 
Vine-entangled ways of the forest 
Seeking, out of all the world. 

Madness of lacchus. 
That being skilled in the secrets of the double cup 
They might turn the dead of the world 
Into paeans, -> 

O High Priest of lacchus. 
Wreathed with the glory of thy years of creating 



169 



Entangled music, 

Breathe ! 
Now that the evening cometh upon thee, 
Breathe upon us, that low-bowed and exultant 
Drink wine of lacchus, that since the conquering 
Hath been chiefly contained in the numbers 
Of them that, even as thou, have woven 
Wicker baskets for grape clusters 
Wherein is concealed the source of the vintage, 

O High Priest of lacchus. 
Breathe thou upon us 

Thy magic in parting! 
Even as thy co-novices. 
At being mingled with the sea, 
While yet thou madest thy canticles 
Serving upright before the altar 
That is bound about with shadows 
Of dead years wherein thy lacchus 
Looked not upon the hills, that being 
Uncared for, praised not him in entirety. 

O High Priest of lacchus, 
Being now near to the border of the sands 
Where the-sapphire girdle of the sea 

Encinctureth the maiden 
Persephone, released for the spring, 
Look! Breathe upon us 



170 



The wonder of the thrice encinctured mystery 
Whereby thou being full of years art young, 
Loving even this lithe Persephone 
That is free for the seasons of plenty; 
Whereby thou being young art old 
And shalt stand before this Persephone 

Whom thou lovest, 
In darkness, even at that time 
That she being returned to her husband 
Shall be queen and a maiden no longer, 
Wherein thou being neither old nor young 
Standing on the verge of the sea 
Shall pass from being sand, 

O High Priest of lacchus, 
And becoming wave 

Shalt encircle all sands, 
Being transmuted through all 
The girdling of the sea. 

O High Priest of lacchus, 
Breathe thou upon us ! 

Note. — This apostrophe was written three years before Swin- 
burne's death. Balderdash but let it stay for the rhythm. — E. P. 



171 



AQPIA 

Be in me as the eternal moods 

of the bleak wind, and not 
As transient things are — 

gaiety of flowers. 
Have me in the strong loneliness 

of sunless cliffs 
And of grey waters. 

Let the gods speak softly of us 
In days hereafter, 

The shadowy flowers of Orcus 
Remember Thee. 



THE NEEDLE 

Come, or the stellar tide will slip away. 
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline, 
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul! 

Here have we had our vantage, the good hour. 
Here we have had our day, your day and mine. 
Come now, before this power 
That bears us up, shall turn against the pole. 



172 



Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be. 
O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly. 
The waves bore In, soon will they bear away. 

The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it. 

Move we and take the tide, with its next favour. 

Abide 

Under some neutral force 

Until this course turneth aside. 



SUB MARE 

It is, and is not, I am sane enough. 

Since you have come this place has hovered round 

me. 
This fabrication built of autumn roses, 
Then there's a goldish colour, different. 

And one gropes in these things as delicate 

Algas reach up and out beneath 

Pale slow green surglngs of the underwave, 

'Mid these things older than the names they have. 

These things that are familiars of the god. 



173 



PLUNGE 

I would bathe myself in strangeness: 

These comforts heaped upon me, smother me 

I burn, I scald so for the new. 

New friends, new faces, 

Places ! 

Oh, to be out of this, 

This that is all I wanted 

— Save the new. 
And you. 

Love, you the much, the more desired ! 
Do I not loathe all walls, streets, stones, 
All mire, mist, all fog, 
All ways of traffic? 

You, I would have flow over me hke water. 
Oh, to be out of this ! 
Grass, and low fields, and hills, 
And sun, 
Oh, sun enough! 
Out and alone, among some 
Alien people 1 



174 



A VIRGINAL 

No, no ! Go from me. I have left her lately. 
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, 
For my surrounding air has a new lightness; 
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly 
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether; 
As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness. 
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness 
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe 
her. 

No, no ! Go from me. I have still the flavour. 
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers. 
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches, 
As winter's wound with her sleight hand she 

staunches. 
Hath of the tress a likeness of the savour: 
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours. 



PAN IS DEAD 

" Pan is dead. Great Pan is dead. 
Ah ! bow your heads, ye maidens all. 
And weave ye him his coronal." 

175 



" There is no summer in the leaves, 
And withered are the sedges; 

How shall we weave a coronal, 
Or gather floral pledges?" 

" That I may not say, Ladies. 
Death was ever a churl. 
That I may not say, Ladies. 
How should he show a reason. 
That he has taken our Lord away 
Upon such hollow season? " 



THE PICTURE* 

The eyes of this dead lady speak to me, 

For here was love, was not to be drowned out, 

And here desire, not to be kissed away. 

The eyes of this dead lady speak to me. 

* " Venus Reclining," by Jacopo del Sellaio (1442-93) 



176 



OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO 

This man knew out the secret ways of love, 

No man could paint such things who did not know. 

And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian, 
And you are here, who are " The Isles " to me. 

And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out: 
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me. 



THE RETURN 

See, they return; ah, see the tentative 
Movements, and the slow feet. 
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain 
Wavering ! 

See, they return, one, and by one. 
With fear, as half-awakened; 
As if the snow should hesitate 
And murmur in the wind, 

and half turn back; 
These were the " Wing'd-withAwe," 
Inviolable. 

177 



Gods of the winged shoe! 
With them the silver hounds, 

sniffing the trace of air! 

Haie! Haie! 

These were the swift to harry; 
These the keen-scented; 
These were the souls of blood. 

Slow on the leash, 

pallid the leash-men 1 



178 



THREE CANTOS 



THREE CANTOS OF A POEM OF SOME 
LENGTH 

An earlier version of these Cantos appeared in Poetry during 
June, July and August, 1917. Most of the poems in the section 
headed " Lustra " had appeared there at earlier dates. To the 
editors of this magazine, and of the others where his poems have 
appeared, the author wishes to make due acknowledgment. 



I 

Hang It all, there can be but the one " Sor- 

dello," 
But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of 

tricks. 
Let in your quirks and tweeks, and say the thing's 

an art-form. 
Your " Sordello," and that the " modern world " 
Needs such a rag-bag to stuff all its thought in; 
Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery 
As fresh sardines flapping and shpping on the mar- 
ginal cobbles ? 
I stand before the booth (the speech), but the truth 
Is inside this discourse: this booth is full of the mar- 
row of wisdom. 
Give up the intaglio method? 

Tower by tower. 
Red-brown the rounded bases, and the plan 
Follows the builder's whim; Beaucaire's slim gray 
Leaps from the stubby base of Altaforte — 
Mohammed's windows, for the Alcazar 
Has such a garden, split by a tame small stream — 
The Moat is ten yards wide, the inner court-yard 
Half a-swim with mire. 
Trunk-hose ? 



i8i 



There are not. The rough men swarm out 
In robes that are half Roman, half like the Knave 

of Hearts. 
And I discern your story: 

Peire Cardinal 
Was half fore-runner of Dante. Arnaut's the trick 
Of the unfinished address, 

And half your dates are out; you mix your eras; 
For that great font, Sordello sat beside — 
'Tis an immortal passage, but the font 
Is some two centuries outside the picture — 
And no matter. 

Ghosts move about me patched with histories. 
You had your business : to set out so much thought. 
So much emotion, and call the lot " Sordello." 
Worth the evasion, the setting figures up 
And breathing life upon them. 

Has it a place in music? And your: " Appear Ve- 
ronal"? 

I walk the airy street, 
See the small cobbles flare with the poppy spoil. 
'Tis your " Great Day," the Corpus Domini, 
And all my chosen and peninsular village 
Has spread this scarlet blaze upon its lane. 
Oh, before I was up, — with poppy-flowers. 
Mid-June, and up and out to the half ruined chapel, 



182 



Not the old place at the height of the rocks 
But that splay barn-like church, the Renaissance 
Had never quite got into trim again. 
As well begin here, here began Catullus: 
*' Home to sweet rest, and to the waves deep laugh- 
ter," 
The laugh they wake amid the border rushes. 
This is our home, the trees are full of laughter. 
And the storms laugh loud, breaking the riven waves 
On square-shaled rocks, and here the sunlight 
Glints on the shaken waters, and the rain 
Comes forth with delicate tread, walking from Isola 
Garda, 

Lch Soleils plovil. 

It is the sun rains, and a spatter of fire 

Darts from the " Lydian " ripples, lacus iindae, 

And the place is full of spirits, not lemtires, 

Not dark and shadow-wet ghosts, but ancient living. 

Wood-white, smooth as the inner-bark, and firm of 

aspect 
And all a-gleam with colour? 

Not a-gleam 
But coloured like the lake and olive leaves, 
GLAUKOPOS, clothed like the poppies, wearing 

golden greaves, 



183 



Light on the air. Are they Etruscan gods? 

The air is solid sunlight, apricus. 

Sun-fed we dwell there (we in England now) 

For Sirmio serves my whim, better than Asolo, 

Yours and unseen. Your palace step? 

My stone seat was the Dogana's vulgarest curb. 

And there were not " those girls," there was one 
flare, 

One face, 'twas all I ever saw, but it was real . . . 

And I can no more say what shape it was . . , 

But she was young, too young. 

True, it was Venice, 

And at Florian's under the North arcade 

I have seen other faces, and had my rolls for break- 
fast. 

Drifted at night and seen the lit, gilt cross-beams 

Glare from the Morosini. 

And for what it's worth 

I have my background; and you had your back- 
ground. 

Watched " the soul," Sordello's soul, flare up 

And lap up life, and leap " to th' Empyrean " ; 

Worked out the form, meditative, semi-dramatic. 

Semi-epic story; and what's left? 

Pre-Daun-Chaucer, Pre-Boccacio? Not Arnaut, 

Not Uc St Circ. 



184 



Gods float in the azure air, 

Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed; 

It is a world hke Puvis' ? 

Never so pale, my friend, 

'Tis the first light — not half-light — Panisks 

And oak-girls and the Maelids have all the wood; 
Our olive Sirmio 

Lies in its burnished mirror, and the Mounts Balde 
and Riva 

Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of 
voices, 

" Non e fuggi." 

" It is not gone." Metastasio 

Is right, we have that world about us. 

And the clouds bowe above the lake, and there are 
folk upon them 

Going their windy ways, moving by Riva, 

By the western shore, far as Lonato, 

And the water is full of silvery almond-white swim- 
mers, 

The silvery water glazes the upturned nipple. 

" When Atlas sat down with his astrolabe, 
He brother to Prometheus, physicist/' 

We let Ficino 

Start us our progress, say it was Moses' birth year? 



185 



Exult with Shang In squatness? The sea-monster 

Bulges the squarish bronzes. 

Daub out, with blue of scarabs, Egypt, 

Green veins in the turquoise? 

Or gray gradual steps 
Lead up beneath flat sprays of heavy cedars: 
Temple of teak-wood, and the gilt-brown arches 
Triple in tier, banners woven by wall. 
Fine screens depicted: sea-waves curled high, 
Small boats with gods upon them, 
Bright flame above the river : Kuanon, 
Footing a boat that's but one lotus petal. 
With some proud four-square genius 
Leading along, one hand upraised for gladness, 
Saying, " 'Tis she, his friend, the mighty Goddess. 
Sing hymns, ye reeds, and all ye roots and herons 

and swans, be glad. 
Ye gardens of the nymphs, put forth your flowers." 
What have I of this life? 

Or even of Guido? 
A pleasant lie that I knew Or San Michaele, 
Believe the tomb he leapt was Julia Laeta's, 
Do not even know which sword he'd with him in the 

street-charge. 
I have but smelt this life, a whiff of It, 
The box of scented wood 



i86 



Recalls cathedrals. Shall I claim; 
Confuse my own phantastikon 
Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me 
Contains the actual sun; 

confuse the thing I see 
With actual gods behind me? 

Are they gods behind me ? 
Worlds we have, how many worlds we have. 

If Botticelli 
Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell, 
His Venus (Simonetta?) , and Spring 
And Aufidus fill all the air 
With their clear-outlined blossoms? 
World enough. Behold, I say, she comes 
" Apparelled like the Spring, Graces her subjects " 

("Pericles"), 
Such worlds enough we have, have brave decors 
And from these like we guess a soul for man 
And build him full of aery populations. 

(Panting and Faustus), 
Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about 

us: 
Barred lights, great flares, and write to paint, not 

music, 
O Casella. 



187 



II 

O " Virgllio mio," 

Send out your thought upon the Mantuan palace, 

Drear waste, great halls; pigment flakes from the 

stone ; 
Forlorner quarter: 

Silk tatters still in the frame, Gonzaga's splendour, 
Where do we come upon the ancient people. 
Or much or little, 

Where do we come upon the ancient people? 
*' All that I know is that a certain star " — 
All that I know of one, Joios, Tolosan, 
Is that in middle May, going along 
A scarce discerned path, turning aside 
In " level poplar lands," he found a flower, and 

wept; 
" Y a la primera flor," he wrote, 
" Qu'ieu trobei, tornei em plor." 
One stave of it, I've lost the copy I had of it in Paris, 
Out of a blue and gilded manuscript: 
Couci's rabbits, a slim fellow throwing dice. 
Purported portraits serving in capitals. 
Joios we have, by such a margent stream. 
He strayed in the field, wept for a flare of colour 
When Coeur de Lion was before Chalus; 
Arnaut's a score of songs, a wry sestina; 



The rose-leaf casts her dew on the ringing glass, 
Dolmetsch will build our age in witching music, 
Viols da Gamba, tabors, tympanons. 

Yin-yo laps in the reeds, my guest departs. 

The maple leaves blot up their shadows. 

The sky is full of Autumn, 

We drink our parting in saki. 

Out of the night comes troubling lute music, 

And we cry out, asking the singer's name, 

And get this answer: 

" Many a one 
Brought me rich presents, my hair was full of jade. 
And my slashed skirts were drenched in the secret 

dyes. 
Well dipped in crimson, and sprinkled with rare 

wines; 
I was well taught my arts at Ga-ma-rio 
And then one year I faded out and married." 
The lute-bowl hid her face. We heard her weeping. 

Society, her sparrows, Venus' sparrows. 

Catullus hung on the phrase (played with it as Mal- 

larme 
Played for a fan: " Reveuse pour que je plonge.") ; 
Wrote out his crib from Sappho : 



189 



God's peer, yea and the very gods are under him 

Facing thee, near thee; and my tongue is heavy, 

And along my veins the fire; and the night is 

Thrust down upon me. 

That was one way of love, flatnma demanat, 

And in a year: " I love her as a father," 

And scarce a year, " Your words are written in 

water," 
And in ten moons : " O Caehus, Lesbia ilia, 
Caelius, Lesbia, our Lesbia, that Lesbia 
Whom Catullus once loved more 
Than his own soul and all his friends. 
Is now the drab of every lousy Roman " ; 
So much for him who puts his trust in woman. 

Dordoigne ! When I was there 

There came a centaur, spying the land 

And there were nymphs behind him; 

Or procession on procession by Salisbury, 

Ancient in various days, long years between them; 

Ply over ply of life still wraps the earth here. 

Catch at Dordoigne I 

Vicount St, Antoni — 
'* D'amor tug miei cossir " — hight Raimon Jordans 
Of land near Caortz. The Lady of Pena 
'* Gentle and highly prized." 



190 



And he was good at arms and bos trobaire, 
*' Thou art the pool of worth, flood-land of pleasure, 
And all my heart is bound about with love, 
As rose in trellis that is bound over and over "; 
Thus were they taken in love beyond all measure. 
But the Viscount Pena 
Went making war into an hostile country. 
And was sore wounded. The news held him dead, 
" And at this news she had great grief and teen," 
And gave the church such wax for his recovery 
That he recovered, 

" And at this news she had great grief and teen " 
And fell a-moping, dismissed St. Antoni, 
" Thus was there more than one in deep distress," 
So ends that novel. Here the blue Dordoigne 
Placid between white cliffs, pale 
As the background of a Leonardo. Elis of Mont- 
fort 
Then sent him her invitations (wife of de Gordon). 
It juts into the sky, Gordon that is. 
Like a thin spire. Blue night pulled down about it 
Like tent-flaps or sails close hauled. When I was 

there, 
La Noche de San Juan, a score of players 
Were walking about the streets in masquerade. 
Pike-staves and paper helmets, and the booths 



191 



Were scattered align, the rag ends of the fair. 

False arms, true arms: 

A flood of people storming about Spain: 

My Cid rode up to Burgos, 
Up to the studded gate between two towers, 
Beat with his lance butt. A girl child of nine years 
Comes to the shrine-like platform in the wall. 
Lisps out the words a-whisper, the King's writ: 
Let no man speak to Diaz (Ruy Diaz, Myo Cid) 
Or give him help or food, on pain of death: 
His heart upon a pike, his eyes torn out, his goods 

sequestered. 
Cid from Bivar, from empty perches of dispersed 

hawks. 
From empty presses. 

Came riding with his company up the great hill 
{Afe Minayaf) to Burgos in the Spring, 
And thence to fighting, to down-throw of Moors 
And to Valencia rode he. By the beard! Muy 

velida! 
Of onrush of lances, of splintered staves 
Riven and broken casques, dismantled castles; 
Of painted shields split up, blazons hacked off, 
Piled men and bloody rivers. Or 
" Of sombre light upon reflected armour " 
When De las Nieblas sails — 



192 



" Y dar nueva lumbre las armas y hierros " — 
And portents in the wind, a pressing air; 
Full many a fathomed sea-change in the eyes 
That sought with him the salt sea victories, 
Rumble of balladist. 

Another gate: 
And Kumasaka's ghost comes back to explain 
How well the young man fenced who ended him. 
Another gate : 

The kernelled walls of Toro, las almenas, 
Aheld, a king come in an unjust cause, 
Atween the chinks aloft flashes the armoured figure, 
" Muy linda! ", " Helen! ", " a star," 

Lights the king's features . . . 
** No use, my liege. She is your highness' sister," 
Breaks in Ancures. 

" Mai fuego s'enciende ! " 
Such are the gestes of war. 

A tire-woman. 
Court sinecure, the court of Portugal, 
And the young prince loved her, Pedro, 
Called later. Cruel. Jealousy, two stabbed her, 
Courtiers, with king's connivance. 
And he, the prince, kept quiet a space of years. 
And came to reign, after uncommon quiet, 
And had his will upon the dagger-players: 



193 



A wedding ceremonial: he and the dug-up corpse in 

cerements. 
Who winked at murder kisses the dead hand, 
Does loyal homage 

" Que despois de ser morta foy Rainha." 
Dig up Camoens: 

" That once as Proserpine 
Gatheredst thy soul's light fruit, and every blindness; 
Thy Enna the flary mead-land of Mondego, 
Long art thou sung by Maidens in Mondego." 
What have we now of her, his " linda Ignez "f 
Houtmans in jail for debt in Lisbon, how long after. 
Contrives a company, the Dutch eat Portugal, 
Follow her ships tracks. Roemer Vischer's daugh- 
ters 
Talking some Greek, dally with glass engraving: 
Vondel, the Eglantine, Dutch Renaissance. 
The old tale out of fashion, daggers gone. 
And Gaby wears Braganza on her throat. 
Another pearl, tied to a public gullet. 

I knew a man, but where 'twas is no matter. 
Born on a farm, he hankered after painting. 
His father kept him at work, no luck. 
Married and got four sons. 



194 



Three died, the fourth he sent to Paris. And this 
son: 

Ten years of JuUans' and the ateliers, 

Ten years of life, his pictures in the salons, 

Name coming in the press; 

and when I knew him : 

Back once again in middle Indiana, 

Acting as usher in the theatre, 

Painting the local drug-shop and soda bars, 

The local doctor's fancy for a mantel-piece: 

Sheep! jabbing the wool upon their flea-bit backs. 

" Them sheep! Them goddamd sheep!! " Ador- 
ing Puvis, 

Giving his family back what they had spent on him. 

Talking Italian cities. 

Local excellence at Perugia ; 

dreaming his renaissance, 

Take my Sordello I 

III 

Another one, half-cracked: John Heydon, 

Worker of miracles, dealer In levitation, 

" Servant of God and secretary of nature," 

The half transparent forms, in trance at Bulverton: 

" Decked all in green," with sleeves of yellow silk 

Slit to the elbow, slashed with various purples. 



195 



(Thus in his vision) Her eyes were green as glass, 
Her foot was leaf-lilce, and she promised him, 
Dangling a chain of emeralds, promised him 
The way of holiest wisdom. 

" Omniformis 
Omnis intellectus est " : thus he begins 
By spouting half of Psellus; no, not " Daemonibus," 
But Porphyry's " Chances," the 13th chapter, 
That every intellect is omniform. 
" A daemon is a substance in the locus of souls." 
Munching Ficino's mumbhng Platonists. 

Valla, more earth and sounder rhetoric, 

Prefacing praise to his Pope, Nicholas: 

A man of parts skilled in the subtlest sciences; 

A patron of the arts, of poetry; and of a fine discern- 
ment. 

A catalogue, his jewels of conversation. 

" Know then the Roman speech: a sacrament" 

Spread for the nations, eucharist of wisdom. 

Bread of the hberal arts. 

Ha I Sir Blancatz, 

Sordello would have your heart up, give it to all the 
princes; 

Valla, the heart of Rome, 

sustaining speech, 



196 



Set out before the people. " Nee bonus 
Chrlstianus " (In the Elegantlae) " ac bonus Tul- 

lianus." 
Shook the church. Marius, Du Bellay, wept for 

the buildings; 
Baldassar Castlgllone saw Raphael 
" Lead back the soul Into Its dead, waste dwelling," 
l.aniato corpore. Lorenzo Valla 
" Broken in middle life? Bent to submission? 
Took a fat living from the Papacy " 
(That's In Villarl, but Burckhardt's statement's dif- 
ferent) . 
" More than the Roman city the Roman speech " 
Holds fast Its part among the ever living. 
" Not by the eagles only was Rome measured." 
" Wherever the Roman speech was, there was 

Rome." 
Wherever the speech crept, there was mastery, 
Spoke with the law's voice, while your greek logi- 
cians. . . . 

More greeks than one! Doughty's "Divine Ho- 

meros " 
Came before sophistry. Justinopolitan, uncata- 

logued. 
One Andreas DIvus gave him in latin, 



197 



In Officina Wecheli, M.D. three " X s." eight, 

Caught up his cadence, word and syllable : 

" Down to the ships we went, set mast and sail, 

Black keel and beasts for bloody sacrifice, 

Weeping we went." 

I've strained my ear for -ensa, -ombra, and -ensa, 

And cracked my wit on delicate canzoni, 

Here's but rough meaning: 
" And then went down to the ship, set keel to 

breakers. 
Forth on the godly sea, 
We set up mast and sail on the swart ship, 
Sheep bore we aboard her, and our bodies also. 
Heavy with weeping; and winds from sternward 
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, 
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. 
Then sat we amidships — wind jamming the tiller — 
Thus with stretched sail 

we went over sea till day's end. 
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean. 
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water. 
To the Kimmerian lands and peopled cities 
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever 
With glitter of sun-rays. 
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from 

heaven, 



198 



Swartest night stretched over wretched men there, 

The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the 
place 

Aforesaid by Circe. 

Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, 

And drawing sword from my hip 

I dug the ell-square pitkin. 

Poured we libations unto each the dead. 

First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with 
white flour. 

Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's- 
heads. 

As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best 

For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods. 

Sheep, to Tiresias only; black and a bell sheep. 

Dark blood flowed in the fosse. 

Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, 

Of brides, of youths, and of much-bearing old; 

Virgins tender, souls stained with recent tears. 

Many men mauled with bronze lance-heads. 

Battle spoil, bearing yet dreary arms, 

These many crowded about me. 

With shouting. Pallor upon me, cried to my men 
for more beasts. 

Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze. 

Poured ointment, cried to the gods, 



199 



To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine, 

Unsheathed the narrow sword, 

1 sat to keep off the impetuous, impotent dead 

Till I should hear Tiresias. 

But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, 

Unburied, cast on the wide earth. 

Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, 

Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged 
other. 

Pitiful spirit, and I cried in hurried speech: 

'' Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast? 

Cam'st thou a-foot, outstripping seamen?" 

And he in heavy speech: 

" 111 fate and abundant wine ! I slept in Circe's 
ingle. 

Going down the long ladder unguarded, I fell 
against the buttress, * 

Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. 

But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, un- 
buried. 

Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-board, and 
inscribed: 

' A man of no fortune and with a name to come* 

And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows." 

Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Anticlea, 
And then Tiresias, Theban, 



200 



Holding his golden wand, knew me and spoke first: 
" Man of 111 hour, why come a second time, 
Leaving the sunlight, facing the sunless dead, and 

this joyless region? 
Stand from the fosse, move back, leave me my 

bloody bever, 
And I will speak you true speeches." 

And I stepped back, 
Sheathing the yellow sword. Dark blood he drank 

then. 
And spoke: " Lustrous Odysseus 
Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark 

seas. 
Lose all companions." Foretold me the ways and 

the signs. 
Came then Anticlea, to whom I answered: 

" Fate drives me on through these deeps. I sought 

Til 
iresias. 

Told her the news of Troy. And thrice her shadow 

Faded In my embrace. 

Lie quiet DIvus. Then had he news of many faded 

women. 
Tyro, Alcmena, Chloris, 

Heard out their tales by that dark fosse, and sailed 
By sirens and thence outward and away. 



20I 



And unto Circe. Buried Elpenor's corpse. 
Lie quiet Divus, plucked from a Paris stall 
With a certain Cretan's " Hymni Deorum " ; 
The thin clear Tuscan stuff 

Gives way before the florid mellow 

phrase, 
Take we the goddess, Venerandam 
Auream coronam habentem, pulchram. . . . 
Cypri munimenta sortita est, maritime. 
Light on the foam, breathed on by Zephyrs 
And air-tending Hours, mirthful, orichalci, with 

golden 
Girdles and breast bands. Thou with dark eyelids, 
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. 

END OF THREE CANTOS 



END 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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